Switch
by J. A. Lowell
Summary: The stress of having great hair was really getting Mary Sue down, so she decided it was time for a vacation. A tale of subtle mockery. And profanity.
1. Jannie Takes a Trip

_It's true, I needn't bother to disclaim,  
Because Holmes and Co. are public domain.  
A warning, though, I will hand out:  
Don't read this when your mum's about.  
It's a little pithy, and somewhat profane,  
And I've been told it'll melt your brain.  
So, gentle readers, have a care,  
And remember that I said, "Beware"._

_This is written in response to BaskervilleBeauty's Mary Sue Challenge, but don't blame her for this. For those unfamiliar with my writing, don't let this turn you off of Beneath Still Waters, which is a fairly decent piece. As that implies, this is not. You've been warned. For those who _**are**_ familiar with my writing, I'm sorry; this has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Rating for profanity, and eccentric Canadian content – you decide which is worse._

_This is a work of fiction; any similarity to living or dead persons and/or events is purely coincidental and unintended, and historical figures are used fictitiously. With the exception of public domain material, all rights are retained by the author under copyright law._

**Chapter the First, in which Jannie Takes a Trip**

I was already late. And I wanted to punch the mini-skirted tart in front of me who was hopping from one foot to the next with each rapid-fire crack of her bubblegum. I multi-task, too, but bouncing like a yoyo, snapping gum, _and_ giggling inanely into a cell-phone while trying to push through the sardine-can affectionately called V-wing is beyond my capabilities. Obviously, this pigtailed prodigy was an example of the University's commitment to admit only the best and brightest of Alberta's youth.

But okay, I know it was my fault that I was late. No one in their right mind would ever agree with me that stopping for a double-double was a necessity. The late-due-to-my-own-stupidity thing I can handle. The late-due-to-stupid-ex thing is another story.

Kevin occasionally thinks he's being amusing. I more than occasionally think that he's being an asshole, and he validates my opinion every single time I come in contact with him, which is far too often for my tastes. When I think back on it, I suppose that was the reason I started dating him in the first place – we wound up seeing each other so often that it seemed like we were going out until we were.

He used to call me Jay. No one ever calls me Jay. JA, Lowell, Ms Lowell, Janice, and Jan. Once, a receptionist called me Ms Andriukov-Lowell, mistakenly assuming that it was a hyphenated last name. But no one ever calls me Jay.

We broke up with more decisiveness than we started dating. After the dust settled, we still saw each other a lot. Now he calls me Jay-Stuff. I've heard some guys use the term "Hotstuff". Kevin doesn't mean it as a compliment. He means that I would need to stuff my bra to look like a real woman.

Kevin is a keyhole limpet. A limpet is a sub-conical marine gastropod which uses its radula to slowly rasp through the calcareous shell of another mollusc, whereupon it eats it. A keyhole limpet has a hole in the apex of its shell. This hole is evolution's way of ensuring that the snail does not excrete into its oral region. Kevin is a tenacious predator. Kevin's top end is also full of shit.

The only thing I really admire about Kevin is his ability to push through any crowd, to always find that hole. If he were more built, he'd have a shot at starting line on the Golden Bears football team.

Today, he came up behind me to ruffle my hair. Generally, this could be construed as a friendly gesture, but Kevin's version of hair ruffling feels more like a knuckle rub.

"Nice hair, Jay-Stuff", he called as he shoved past Little Miss Miniskirt.

Well, it had been nice this morning, I thought, as I scurried down the stairs to the V-wing basement. I wondered if I had time to do damage control on my hair. Oh hell, I was late already. Better to be late than to look like I just got out of bed. I pushed past the green door to the Ladies, noting that some industrious soul had tacked up a new "Please don't vandalize" sign. It's ironic that the signs get vandalized more often than the washroom, although I've often thought that it would be amusing to write "Heisenberg was here, but we don't know how fast he was going".

The light in the washroom made me look like the walking dead. The well-dressed walking dead, to be certain, but aside from the pressed suit, I didn't make a very appetizing specimen of the undergrad student body. My hair, as I'd suspected, was a disaster. Cute pixie cuts only look professional when every spiky clump of hair has been meticulously sprayed in place. I sighed, and leaned into the sink to wash some of the spray and mousse out. Maybe I could salvage it a bit. I looked up into the mirror. Maybe not.

Screw it. Part it off to the side, slick it back, fix the make-up smudges. So much for femininity. I should have brought a hat. Twelve minutes late.

My cell phone rang. "There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium…" Usually Lehrer's _Element Song_ cheers me up. Usually I get a little shiver of glee when Doc calls. But today I was late, and he was going to be ticked off. To answer, or not to answer? "Chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium."

Answer. "Hullo, Jan here."

"Jan, hey, how's it going?"

"Oh, good enough, running late. Sorry for keeping you waiting, it's been a pretty hectic morning."

"You're telling me. Listen, I have a lab exam to oversee right now, I totally forgot about it. Just thought I should give you a call, so you weren't sitting around waiting for me."

Can you be stood up by someone you're not really dating?

Head-sink. Now what?

Right, well I could always go to the museum by myself. But what if Doc wanted to go tomorrow night? Going to the evening lecture would be more like a date – maybe I could suggest drinks afterwards.

Now there was just the question of what to do in the meantime. It wasn't outside the realm of possibility that Sylvie was hanging out in the Kettles cafeteria. Their coffee sucks, but the company beats the hell out of the drones over in the Markin Engineering building. I'll do a lot for Tims coffee, but I draw the line at hanging out with Engs. I don't fraternize with the enemy.

Interesting opinion that I've successfully argued: In a battle to the death between opposing battalions of Engs and FacScis, the FacScis would win. Sure, the Engs understand the mechanics of heavy artillery, airplanes, and all the other good stuff. But the FacScis have got the biological and chemical warfare thing covered. Plus, we know human anatomy well enough to patch ourselves back together. Hells yes.

I leaned in to the mirror to fix my mascara, and then surveyed my countenance. The walking dead, with bad hair. The one cheerful thought that drummed through my mind was that today couldn't possibly get any worse. All uphill from here.

Well, actually, no. I like taking the underground passage into Biosci. The helium recovery pipes rattle, the passage always smells odd, and I've seen the occasional cockroach scurrying about in the evening. It makes me feel as though I'm walking through the guts of the university, which is a comforting notion. Sort of reminds a person that no matter how pretty anything is on the outside, it's still kinda nasty when you get down to the viscera.

There was a heap of used office furniture by the doorway to the Physics staircase. Someone had tacked a loose-leaf sign above it that read: "Moving Out! Free Stuff!" The desk had some scratches on it, but wasn't bad, otherwise. There was a chemical supply cabinet, too, for some strange reason. Shame I didn't have a pickup truck. I really need a chemical cabinet. Sometimes I worry that bottles will explode, leak, or do other nasty things. Far more often, I worry that my landlord will stop by, and see that I'm storing all manner of acids and bases on the premises. He'd probably be okay with it, once he calmed down, but still.

The other junk held only limited interest: a beat-up bookcase, a desk lamp, some textbooks that might have passed for recent editions back when Meatloaf was popular, and a dead office chair. Dead office chairs are depressing, because you just know that no one is ever going to expend the effort to fix them. For years, they cushion your ass, and then one day, a wheel falls off, or the back breaks, and then they get hauled out to the trash. A new office chair is $140.00 at Staples, and if you kick in an extra 20, they'll deliver it. Simple, no hassles. Meanwhile, your poor old chair rots in the rain, out beside the dumpster.

I should have taken the dead chair as an omen.

A car game I've played with backpacking buddies while driving to Lake Louise involves the driver randomly pointing at things, asking "What's that?" It's kind of like I-Spy – all the passengers are supposed to try to guess what the driver is pointing at. Perennial favourites in the response category are car, sky, power line, power pole, tree, truck, Corvette (whether there is one, or not), road, highway sign, cloud, deer, and police. The game is over if there actually are deer or police. Anyway, the point is, no matter what the passengers say, they're wrong. Understand that only the driver can actually determine what he's pointing at, and his role in the game is to insult the passengers for being so abysmally stupid in their responses, regardless of whether or not they were correct at any point.

Driver: "What's that?"

Typical responses: "A tree", "The back end of a Gold Star truck", "10 zillion bits of trees in the back of a Gold Star truck", "Highway stripes", "Bits of trees falling from the Gold Star truck, _onto_ the highway stripes".

Me, spotting a deer-crossing signpost: "It's a sign!"

Driver: "Christ, Jan, you don't have to take it so seriously. It's more like a warning."

The chair wasn't a sign. But it might have been a warning. Of course, being an atheist, I'm disinclined towards superstition, and the ominous dead chair didn't register in my mind as having any special significance.

There's a double doorway on either side of the physics staircase. Generally, these doors stand open until building services start locking up at 6:00. Today, the far door to the passage leading beyond the generators wasn't open. Not only was it not open, it was locked. That struck me as rather odd, and I turned to contemplate the stairs (I don't trust the elevator in that building, which explains why I've never been up to the astronomical observatory).

In this particular location, the stairwell is very pleasant. Compared to the rest of the underground passage, it's well lit, and clean, and the peach-pink walls are friendly. Anyway, about the stairs. I've walked past them hundreds of times, and climbed them dozens, and today was the first time that it occurred to me that there were stairs going _down_ as well.

They say idle hands are the devil's playthings. Corollary: A curious mind lacking an agenda is equivalent to trouble.

The sub-basement was neither clean, nor friendly, nor peach. I could hear the clanking of machinery, presumably behind some of the doors stretching in either direction. Most of the doors looked utilitarian, but a few could have passed for offices. There were names on some, and a lonely looking bulletin board beside the one at the end of the hall. Pity the grad students that worked here. The double doors that were probably supposed to bar my entrance were closed, but squeaked open with a little pressure.

I sauntered down the hallway, idly wondering if it was worth my while to snoop at the bulletin board. It wasn't. There was a notice about a quantum physics conference that had been held last October, a message to call Jerry, and a faded pink index card upon which someone had scrawled "Welcome to the Dream Machine!" I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, but it was a close call. I tried the doorknob for the hell of it, and was surprised to find that it opened.

I did what anyone would do in that situation. Well, no. I guess most people would probably shut the door, and return to the stairs. Okay, so I did what any bored scientist with a tendency for getting into mischief would do: I went in.

The first thing I noticed was that the air smelled weird. It took me a few moments before my brain kicked in, and registered the scent as ozone. I couldn't remember what concentration of ozone a person could safely inhale without harm, but in hindsight, it probably didn't matter, as I have no idea how you'd measure ozone concentration anyway. Probably a good rule of thumb is that used for most chemicals: if you can smell it, there's too much. Far more worrisome, however, was the question of what was producing the ozone. Were they working with some sort of high voltage electricity?

The room was dark, and unoccupied except for a green lava lamp slowly bubbling in a distant corner. It didn't provide enough light to do anything more than make things look creepy. I hesitantly passed my hand along the wall beside me. There had to be lights somewhere. Or maybe not.

Bugger. Well, now my curiosity was piqued. I fumbled in my purse, and pulled out my cell phone. I keyed the flashlight on, and passed the narrow LED beam across the room before me. A smiley-faced lightbulb sticker began to glow along the far wall, the phosphorescence recharged by my flashlight. I held the light on it for a minute or so, and then flicked the weak beam along the path I would have to take to what I presumed was the switch.

There didn't appear to be desks or tables obstructing my path, so I stuffed the phone back into my purse, and gave the lava lamp a careless grin. Its name was Larry, I decided. Larry the Lava Lamp. Nice ring to it.

About halfway across the room, it occurred to me that this wasn't one of my better plans. I don't claim to be a genius, but occasionally I have my moments. This wasn't one of them. _I should get out of here, shouldn't I, Larry?_ I thought. I live by the philosophy that you're only crazy when you start saying these things out loud. I decided to take the yellowy glob of wax that was slowly rising as a non-vocal confirmation of my decision to backtrack. When you're having a conversation with a lamp, you take what you can get.

To hell with curiosity. Besides, that ozone smell was stilling hanging around. Ozone is three oxygen molecules, and inherently unstable – it should have dissipated, but I could still smell traces of it, which was really beginning to worry me. It was high time for ickle Jannie to get out while the getting was good.

Too late. The spike on my heel (why the hell did I ever think spikes were appropriate to wear today?) snagged a cord or something. Crap. I couldn't tell if I'd pulled anything apart, or not. Best to check. For half a second, I considered using my cell phone again. Okay, I never said I was smart.

A few more seconds of thought led me to the conclusion that circumstances had conspired to encourage me to turn on the light switch and have a look around. I had to fix whatever I had pulled apart, anyway.

There is no bogeyman. Just flip the damn switch. Quit prevaricating. I grinned; I'd always wanted to use that word in conversation. Pity there was only Larry the Lava Lamp to appreciate my wit and vocabulary. I made it to the wall without further incident, and grasped the switch decisively.

A cool, prickly numbness flooded along my fingers, and up my arm. I tried to jerk my hand away from the switch, but I couldn't seem to let go. A stabbing pain jolted through my abdomen, and twin bursts of light flashed in front of me. The numbness was in my chest, now, and my breath was coming in gasps. All control of my nerves and muscles was suddenly gone, and I had the strangest sensation of falling as I arched my head back, away from the prickly cold that was creeping up my neck.

If you've ever woken up in a strange bed, and not been able to remember how you came to be there, you might understand how I felt. I was not, however, in a bed. The first thing I became aware of was the smell of smog and dung – a perplexing blend of rural and urban. The second thing was muffled shouting and an unending roar of clatters and creaks. The third thing was the headache, and the fourth was the fact that I was laying on cobblestones.

Jumping to my feet in a panicked rush didn't help my splitting head, and I sat down again almost as quickly as I had stood. _Okay, Jan. Let's be logical for a minute, alright?_ I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths. _If the last thing you remember is a dark lab, then you are still in the dark lab. Unless you were high, and imagined a dark lab. But, since you limit your indulgences to alcohol of varying concentrations, it stands to reason that you are neither high, nor sitting on a cobblestone street like a wino._ I tentatively passed my hand over the ground beside me. It still felt like cobbles. I cautiously opened my eyes. Yep. Still cobbles.

There're a lot of things that I'm not an expert about, and the things I am expert about don't apply to everyday life. However, I will lay some pretty heavy bets that there aren't any cobblestone streets within a ten-kilometer radius of campus. So where the hell was I?

My legs were shaky as I got up to my feet. The world tilted a bit, but I told it to behave itself, and it straightened up. I had taken no more than four steps when it occurred to me that I hadn't yet had a good look at my surroundings.

Across from where I stood was a row of narrow, drab brown houses, at the corner of which was a barbers pole. A civilized nation, anyways. A rag-tag team of incredibly grimy children came racing around the corner, but even that was fairly normal. Kids are smelly and dirty anywhere you go. It was when a brougham clattered up the street that I knew for sure. It stopped a couple of houses down from where I was gaping, and a young woman descended. Gathering up my wits, I jogged over to the cab, and called up to the driver, "Can you tell me where exactly I am? I seem to have gotten a little lost." The greatest understatement of my life, yes, I'll take a bow: thank you, thank you.

The cabby lifted his hand to cut the glare of the sun, and peered down at me. "Tough night, eh sir? Twelve shillings'll get you near 'nough anywhere."

Sir?

I looked over at the young woman who was ascending the last stair before her door. I looked at what she was wearing. Skirts, tailored blouse, big plumed hat. I looked down at what I was wearing. Suit. Oh. I get it. Sir.

The cabby had taken my lack of response for disinterest, and the horses were merrily clopping away by the time I looked back. My usual strategy when in doubt is to go for a wander, so I set off down the street. Whatever had numbed my body earlier had probably numbed my brain as well, because I made it another 400 meters before I started panicking again.

A trickle of cold sweat worked itself down my back, and I started shaking uncontrollably. I sank down upon a sandstone step, and bit down hard on my lip until the coppery taste of blood flooded into my mouth. _Get a grip, Jan. There is no such thing as time travel. Hawking, Einstein, and 95 percent of all other scientific authorities agree. And whatever _is_ going on, panic attacks aren't going to help. Remember what the Guide says? Don't panic. And make sure you have a towel._

Fuck. I just _knew_ there was something I'd forgotten.


	2. Jannie Goes Shopping

**Chapter the Second, in Which Jannie Goes Shopping**

Like electrons, gluons, and quarks, the idion is a subatomic particle. However, it differs in that it is capable of producing strange and unpredictable behaviour in otherwise simple systems. And by systems, I mean people. I'm convinced that such particles are responsible for 90 percent of all human idiocy. After all, no one likes to blame themselves for being a dullard – the idion is the perfect scapegoat, and I stand firmly by the existence of this imaginary particle.

Thus, I can say with great equanimity that it was not my fault that I realized only now that I wasn't wearing any shoes. I wasn't daft, just a sad victim of a bozone layer produced by radiation-induced generation of idions in the stratosphere.

The sight of my bare feet protruding from beneath the cuffs of my pants sobered me as nothing else had since falling into this cheesy Victorian hallucination. I swallowed hard, and licked the last bit of blood from my lip. Okay, so now I had two questions to answer: Where was I, and where were my shoes?

I wondered if I'd had them when I woke up, and frowned in concentration. I looked back up the street, but there weren't any glittery red spikes tap dancing down the cobbles towards me. Pity. I recalled that I'd jogged up to the cab, and that clinched the argument. No shoes, because Jan plus jogging plus four inch heels would have had me passed out on the street again. I don't even need a calculator for that one.

Suddenly, I sat bolt-upright. Never mind the goddamn shoes! Where the hell was my laptop?

And why weren't my toenails neon green anymore?

And where was my watch?

And – oh god – I pressed my palms against my chest in horror – where was my bra?

This was decidedly not cool.

It started as a fit of uncontrollable giggles, and escalated, despite the fact that I bit down on my knuckles to stop myself. How many times had Kevin criticized my wardrobe? "You look like a dyke, Jan; you're bad for my image." And how bad would it be for his image if it had been him in my position? Mr Polyester & Shades?

Because it was obvious to me what had happened here. Hey, I'm not an SF geek for nothing. By all laws of rationality, stuff from the future couldn't possibly go back in time, could it? Because then the very act of transference would have massively affected history by introducing technology out of context, and the timeline you were transferring from would have ceased to exist in the very instant that you transferred. Therefore, you wouldn't have transferred at all. You would probably have just ceased to exist. It's called a time paradox. Kind of like going back in time, and accidentally killing your own grandfather.

It suddenly seemed quite logical to be without all of my petroleum derived products. After all, if this really was the Victorian era, they were still mucking around with coal-tar. Thankfully, my suit and skivvies were natural fibers. Just imagine if I'd been wearing something like pleather pants. Just imagine Kevin. The thought of Kevin gaping around and desperately trying to cover his bits and pieces sent me into yet another spasm of laughter.

But another thought was bothering me, and I stopped snickering after a bit. The time paradox thing went deeper than gadgets, gizmos, and synthetic fibers. If the Butterfly Effect were to be taken into account, just the addition of my carbon dioxide exhalations could be contributing to massive global warming in my future. Except that, uh, there's already massive global warming… Okay, maybe I don't need to worry about that one; it's someone else's problem, right? But still, if I _had_ just been transported a century or so back in the past, it was almost certain that my actions would have some effect. Hell, maybe by querying the cabbie I'd made him late for an important fare, and thus changed his entire destiny.

Destiny?

Screw that. I didn't believe in destinies. And, I decided, as I picked myself up off of the highly uncomfortable sandstone step, I didn't believe in time travel, either. There had to be another explanation for all of this.

The simplest explanation was that I was dead, and that this was the afterlife.

But an afterlife implied a soul. A soul implied immortality. Immortality implied another plane of existence. The movement of souls to another plane of existence implied some form of order to the universe. Order implied laws of governance, which implied an intellect to make the laws, which in turn implied a supreme being. That is to say, an afterlife was a religious concept, and therefore not the most parsimonious explanation after all. A much simpler explanation was alien abduction – there aren't as many logical fallacies there.

But neither one of these seemingly-simple theories described my situation very well. Oh well, I thought, cogitating wasn't going to get anything done, was it? I resolutely ignored the fact that I didn't exactly have anything to do. I set off down the street again, this time a lot more conscious of the rough cobbles beneath my bare feet. No wonder the cabbie had asked if I'd had a tough night.

So, shoes were the first order of business. Then I'd start figuring out what had happened, and how I was going to get out of this mess.

Here's a question that I'd like to put to all the great minds of the world: When subject J is without footwear, how does subject J go about remedying this dilemma, given that subject J has no money on her person?

A mathematician's answer would probably involve something in n-dimensional space, and would probably be correct, so far as the variables _x_, _y_, and _q_-sub-_i_ go. This would be unhelpful, as everyone knows that mathematics do not adequately describe reality, and when they seem to, there's probably another variable unaccounted for.

A psychologist might do a little better: Why should subject J feel the need for footwear? This need, this desire, -- dare I say this addiction? – to footwear hints at a deep-seated personality problem. Tell me, subject J, was there anything particularly traumatic in your childhood that might have involved shoes?

The anthropologists would offer a much more practical response, but it would involve tapping a Clovis point out of a piece of chert, running down a deer, skinning it, tanning its hide… It's enough to make a person feel sweaty and tired just thinking about it.

Steven Hawking would have a really good idea, but I still had a headache, and undoubtedly wouldn't be able to wrap my mind around it.

No, the solution that was appealing to me the most right now was to be found in good old Canadian ingenuity.

You bet.

Duct tape.

The unfortunate problem with this cure-all for what ails you (or your K-car) was that I was, to all intents and purposes, trapped in a previous century, long before the fine upstanding citizens of Possum Lake had educated the world as to the many benefits of the handyman's secret weapon. Hell, duct tape probably didn't even exist, yet. But this line of thought had the secondary effect of leading me towards a much better solution.

"_What have you got there, Mike?"_

"_Oh, nothing, Mr. Green. And whatever it is, it did not come from Humphrey's Everything Store. And you haven't seen me today."_

Prestidigitation had just become my newest, favorite-ist word. And I don't mean magic tricks.

I find that I have a rather malleable conscience – it's not something you want to bring up in a job interview, but it's definitely a trait to culture if you ever want to get ahead in the world. "Yes, those lab results are _well within_ the predicted range for this hypothesis – see, the chi-squared value shows that the null hypothesis is very definitely refuted" Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and please ignore the pink elephant. Wasn't it Benjamin Disraeli who gave us that famous quote "Lies. Damned lies, and statistics"?

Fudging lab results is one thing, but I've always managed to maintain a certain sanctimonious attitude by not actually doing anything that was technically illegal. My nose was always clean, even if my soul (always assuming I had one) wasn't. I haven't even cheated, and now I was contemplating wandering into a store and shoplifting myself a pair of boots. How the mighty have fallen.

There was, I thought, one advantage to being stuck in the past. No electronic anti-theft devices. Of course, there was always the question of whether or not I would even be allowed into a store. Civilized nations the world over seem to have a no-shoes-no-service policy. The fact that this mandate has, in modernity, such a cosmopolitan biogeographic distribution leads one to believe that the policy is symplesiomorphic – evolved by an ancestral clade of shopkeepers in the distant past. Which, to be succinct, meant that I was buggered.

I gave the street that I was on a cursory glance. It seemed that I'd wandered into a much more upscale region. There was a classy looking storefront bearing a tailor's sign, a couple restaurants, and a milliner's within immediate view. I raised an eyebrow at the absurdity of one of the feathery concoctions on display in the window. Surely no one actually _wore_ things like that, did they? Maybe being mistaken for a guy was a blessing in disguise. I turned away in slight horror and a little disgust, and in doing so, caught sight of a signpost.

Finally! Now I could figure out where the hell I was. I had to squint to get a good look at it. Jermyn Street. I allowed myself a smirk. Someone on city council had "lernd too spel with fonics". Amusing, yes, but singularly unhelpful. "Jermyn Street" told me absolutely nothing. At least when you're lost on Bourbon Street in West Edmonton Mall, there are maps that have handy little "You Are Here" notes on them. And if you're still sober at that point, they even make sense.

Oh well, it looked like a commercial district, so that had to offer opportunities, right? It only took me a couple blocks to revise that assessment. Spelled correctly, or not, Jermyn Street was ritzy. No Value Villages here. I was losing hope faster than the Avro Arrow. I'd seen everything from jewellers to a place that boasted 130 different types of tobacco. Oh, sure, there were plenty of tailors, clothing stores (well, shirt stores, anyway, which was odd), and more than a few shoe stores, but they all looked _very_ upscale. Nothing that looked promising as a potential hit for Shoeless Jan of The Sticky Fingers.

I gazed up in defeat at the building beside me. And felt my jaw drop. The swirling writing on the sign proclaimed that this was Savoy Turkish Baths Ltd, of 92 Jermyn Street.

Score.

I cased out the building like an old pro. What I needed was a side entrance – something that staff might use. That, and a bit of luck. I tried not to think too much about the quality of my luck as of late, as I wandered up to the door, trying to look nonchalant in case anyone was paying attention to me. I tried the knob, and like another door in my not-too-distant memory, it opened. So far, so good. I went in.

I had expected it to be steamy and muggy, but instead, the corridor I passed through was only hot. Weird. I swiped at the droplets of sweat that were building on my upper lip, and kept walking. A few turns (left, left, right, left, so that's right, left, right, right on the way out) later, and I noticed that the air was a bit cooler. Good, that had to mean I was getting closer to the changing rooms.

My luck ran out abruptly, as I nearly collided with a heavyset woman carrying a tray laden with tea things.

"Oh, I am terribly sorry, sir." She sounded flustered, and gave me a little curtsey. How she managed it without upsetting the tea tray was anyone's guess. "Mathilda must not have given you the right directions, you'll be wanting the changing rooms, then, won't you? Just down that hall, sir, yes, right there."

I've heard that dumb luck only happens to dumb people. Hmm. Perhaps best not to think too long on that one. In any case, I was relieved that she'd been too worried over our near-collision to notice my footwear, or lack thereof.

More dumb luck. The change room was utterly deserted. I scoped out the range of boots, and my feminine side took a heavy blow when I realized that of the twenty five or thirty pairs, there were only four or five that were large enough to fit my feet. Two of them I was able to disqualify almost immediately as being too large, which made me feel slightly better about things. I tried the other three pairs on quickly, and couldn't help but make the inevitable Goldilocks parallel. None of them were just right, unfortunately, but I thought that the last pair would probably suffice. Plus, I rather liked the buckles. Ooo, shiny.

I was just turning to go – honestly! – when I spotted a billfold looking all lonely and abandoned on a bench. Ah well, I thought, as I scooped it up and tucked it into my back pocket, I might as well get hung for the whole horse.

Left, right, left, right, right, and I was free. I permitted myself a single grin, and then set about putting distance between myself and the scene of the crime. I'm just superstitious enough to believe it unwise to linger, and laugh right in fate's face. Better to congratulate myself at a distance.

After an hour of concerted speed-walking, I was feeling less smug, rather blistered (what I wouldn't have given for a pair of merino socks!), but infinitely more content with my current lot in life. I'd examined the billfold earlier, and I wasn't wealthy by any means, but I figured I could afford a very nice supper and some expensive merlot at the very least.

I'd finally started seeing places that I recognized, and now I knew for sure that I was in London. Currently, I was lounging along Montague Street, and contemplating the British Museum. If I remembered anything from the travel pamphlets I optimistically kept in a file labelled "Potential Holidays -- $$$", admission was free to all and sundry.

As badly as I wanted to go in for a snoop, what I really needed was an institute of science. After all, my goals for today were to figure out where I was (check), find footwear (check), and figure out how I'd gotten here (che—no, wait. That's still on the list).

On further contemplation, the idea of walking up to a physicist and asking about time travel was a bit ludicrous. After all, if people in 2006 don't believe it can happen, why should people in – What year was it, anyway? Hmm, in all this confusion about where I was, I'd forgotten to ask _when_.

Well, that was easily remedied. There was a newspaper stand on a corner I'd just passed. It was the work of minutes to purchase a copy. The Times. Typical, I thought, as I scanned the cover. Finally, my eye caught the date. 12 June, 1891. Un-freaking-believable.

This hyperventilating, cold sweat, panicky thing was getting a little old, a detached part of my brain commented, as I struggled to control my breathing. I had been quite certain that time travel did not exist. I had also been quite certain that yesterday, when I had stumbled out of bed, fallen over a heap of textbooks, and knocked a plant onto the floor, it had been April 27, 2006. Now, I could see time travel jumping back by years, but why the hell was I missing damn near a month and a half?

I looked around the street and shivered a bit. This, I figured, was probably what aliens would feel like if they ever showed up. That wasn't a comforting thought, so I balled it up and threw it down my mental well, where it could keep company with memories of Kevin's naked arse.

_Alright, Jan_, I thought to myself, _You need to come up with some sort of plan. Running rough-shod through Victorian London is only going to work in your favour for so long. Can't make a living off of nicking wallets._ Actually, I suspected I probably could last quite awhile in that fashion, but my conscience, despite routine beatings, didn't stay in a fetal pose of submission for long. _What you need_, my internal monologue continued, _Is some form of gainful employment, and a roof over your head, until you can figure this whole thing out._ The stubborn optimist in me veered away from the thought of anything about this situation being permanent. This was all a wonky dream. Yep, I was going to wake up pretty soon, now. Just wait, you'll see.

I had been wandering as I argued with myself, and consequently no longer knew which street I was on. So much for trying to get an idea of the lay of the land. Even the weather was against me – the sun, which had been bright to the point of painful when I'd woken up, was now obscured behind clouds. I squinted up at the sky. Did it look just a bit brighter towards the right? It was afternoon, so that meant that I was facing south, or just off of south-south-west. The clouds shifted a bit, and I realized my eyes had been deceiving me. I sighed, and wished, for about the thirtieth time, that I had a map.

The relative good luck I'd been having up to this point deserted me. I felt a drop of water hit my shoulder. I looked up, and was rewarded with another heavy drop spattering across the left lens of my glasses. Crap. In London, the weather apparently does not build up to a crescendo. It starts off that way, which makes for a poor composition, but a hell of a good drenching.

I've got one of those mothers who are always warning you to take a scarf in the springtime ("It might snow!"), a sweater in the evening ("July! Pah! It still gets chilly once the sun sets – don't you come whining to me if you catch cold!"), and an umbrella any time you leave the house. I suppose this is what she meant when she said "Someday, you'll wish you'd listened to me!"

I _did_ wish I'd had an umbrella with me. Or would that be a bumbershoot? Whatever – if it's a portable roof, I'll take it.

Even that towel would have been handy, although the newspaper probably worked just as well. I felt a bit ridiculous holding it over my head, and contemplated whether or not I should start singing about a light on over at the Frankenstein place.

Just then, a four-wheeler careened around the corner I was standing on. My inner pessimist nodded sagely, as the back wheel transported the contents of a puddle onto my pant legs. My inner two-year-old decided that this was the perfect opportunity to throw a tantrum. I didn't even bother trying to contain the profanities that were streaming off my tongue. Fuck this bullshit, I wanted to go home.

Just click your heels together three times and think of Whyte Avenue, right? Just for the record, it didn't work. Nor did it work the second, third, or fourth time I tried it. I refrained from attempting a fifth trial, because that would have come off as pathetically desperate. Four replications with zero standard deviation around the mean result registers as pretty good statistics in my books. All experimental evidence pointed to one inescapable conclusion: I wasn't going to get out of this that easily.

I wondered, idly, if you really _could_ get a tan from standing in the English rain.


	3. Jannie Gets Plastered

**Chapter the Third, in Which Jannie Gets Plastered**

Here's a joke: what's cold, soggy, and pissed off?

Me, and I know that's not funny. Neither was the situation. In the space of a single day, I'd had my entire universe turned upside down, and now, as a final indignity, it was raining. Great. Just absolutely fucking great. Life just kept getting better, didn't it?

I swiped my dripping hair out of my eyes, and let my shoulders slump with a self-pitying sigh. I wanted dry clothes. I wanted to be back in Edmonton. I wanted to be on my almost-date with my almost-PhD almost-boyfriend. I wanted my apartment and my 34-inch television, and Bob Macdonald's voice echoing from surround sound speakers. I wanted my laptop. I wanted automobiles, ETS buses, and the LRT.

Most of all, I wanted some Big Rock Grasshöpper so badly I could have cried.

Well, there was a remedy for that one, at least. This was, after all, London. Granted, it was London in 1891, and a woman of any sort of quality probably wouldn't be caught dead in a bar, but I think we've already established that I fail in the "lady-like" category. And so far, I'd been mistaken for male a surprising (and humiliating) number of times, so I doubted it would be that hard to sneak into a watering hole. Probably just like that summer in British Columbia, where the rule was keep your head down, and don't voluntarily produce your ID. Ever.

Logically, I knew I wasn't going to get away with this charade forever. Yes, some people are stupid all the time, but most oscillate between stupid and slightly daft. It's the slightly daft ones you have to watch out for – once in a while, they do or think something incredibly smart, and that's when shit hits the fan.

Not to say that it would take a genius to work out that I was a woman. I wasn't terribly curvy, but neither did I shave. I did, however, think that I could probably get away with it if I stayed at the sidelines, scowled, clenched my jaw a bit, and kept my mouth shut as much as possible.

This last was a key point, because apparently I have a phone sex voice – low and husky. And considering the sort of guy Kevin is (was? will be?), I suppose he would know. That categorization always bothered me, because it made me feel cheap. Which is just the point, I suppose. No, I had always likened myself to that bleach-bottle blonde, Kim Carnes, who rasped her way onto the top of the charts with "Bette Davis Eyes". But all that was semantics. Either way, I suspected if I said more than was absolutely necessary, I was going to give the whole game away before you could say "Glenlivet".

I wasn't getting any drier by standing around, so, having made up my mind about my course of action, I set off down the pavement, my pant-legs sticking uncomfortably to my calves. I debated calling for one of the cabbies, and decided that it would be pointless, because I didn't exactly have a destination in mind. My working knowledge of London was feeble at best, and unlikely to improve, considering that I hadn't yet managed to get my bearings.

I took a left at the next corner, painfully aware that I wasn't even making educated guesses anymore. It's a shame, really, that all of my practical knowledge amounted to zip in an urban setting – the fact that moss grows best on the north side of trees is unhelpful in a metropolitan jungle. I found myself wistfully recalling my Suunto compass, and all the many times it had been my unswerving companion. And now, the very fabric of time and space separated me from my beloved.

It struck me, then, that I would probably never see my compass again.

My eyes were stinging. It must have been the smog, which the clouds and the rain had damped in place. And I'm an awful liar. _Buck up, Jan_, I told myself, _You're not allowed to get maudlin until you're smashed, and even then, you really ought to show some dignity, eh?_

Right. There would be time to get all soppy – I grimaced at the unfortunate pun – about things later. Right now, I needed someplace dry, and warm, and the sooner the better, because my patience with this whole fiasco had run out long ago.

Well, that was odd. I shook my head, and listened again. Yes, there it was. There were faint strains of music reaching my ears, and I closed my eyes and slowly swivelled my head, trying to locate the source. I wasn't certain, but it seemed to be off to my left. I glanced up and down the street to ensure I wouldn't be run down by a horse or two, and then darted across.

Yes! It was louder over here. Finally, something was going right. I took a shortcut through an alley, and emerged next to a chemist's. There was a sign in the window that advertised "Hygienic Tinctures of Muriatic Acid". I cocked my head to one side, and tried to imagine how hydrochloric acid would be used in a cleansing ritual. Nothing that sounded like a sane possibility occurred to me, so I walked on.

The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle, which wasn't really a noticeable improvement, as it was darker now, and colder. A block or so ahead of me, streetlights were beginning to turn on. It puzzled me, for a moment, that they didn't turn on simultaneously, but when I noticed a gaslighter beneath one, the mystery was resolved.

If I stopped to think about it, I expect I would have been perplexed at my brain's continued inability to adapt to a new situation.

As it was, I had more pressing concerns, because I had finally located the source of the jaunty piano. A welcoming pool of yellow light beckoned me over to the door of the Red Lion, and I ran a hand back through my hair, and straightened my blazer. No reason I couldn't at least look half-presentable.

The pub I wandered into didn't conform to the low-lights rule that I'd come to associate with these venues of chemically-induced debauchery. Obviously, I hadn't expected a neon Molson sign, but I did expect it to at least look like a bar. The lighting was painfully bright, illuminating the clouds of tobacco smoke that swirled up from the patrons.

Paradigm shifts are funny things. In that instant, I came to the life-shattering conclusion that the Powerplant wasn't the worst bar in the world. It had one over the Red Lion any day, because there was a non-smoking policy in place. I was breathing hesitantly, and debating the merits of going back out into the rain. Asthmatic asphyxiation with the benefits of warmth, or hypothermia?

I was attracting a couple glances, and that made up my mind. I strode purposefully towards an empty table along the wall, and slouched down into my seat. Within a few minutes, a doughy woman with a pleasant face was inquiring as to what I wanted.

"Something edible, for starters, and some beer." Damn. I'd forgotten that my lack of a British accent would be out of place here. A middle-aged fellow with a pointed face and a neat, full beard was doing a very bad impression of ignoring me. After a quick glance in his direction, I did a much better job of ignoring him.

The stew that the barmaid brought qualified as edible, and I set about demolishing it, occasionally sopping up gravy with my dinner roll, in a fashion that I suspected was highly uncouth. I decided that a lack of manners added nothing but verisimilitude to my acting, and improved the performance by wiping my mouth with my sleeve, before quaffing back the liquid that did not quite qualify as beer. The predominant flavour, I decided, was bitter-salt-sweat. I drained the last of it, and pushed the mug aside with a grimace.

"You do not care for English brews, then?" The thin man with the pointed face was in the process of drawing the chair opposite me. His voice was mellifluous, despite the fact that he stressed his words with a slightly German accent.

"Can't say as I do." I kept my response short, hoping he would take the hint.

He nodded, and seemed thoughtful, and far too comfortable. "I, myself, enjoy the flavour of hops, and of malt barley."

I nodded in agreement, and considered extolling the virtues of Black Amber, straight from the tap. He didn't seem to care that I wasn't participating in the conversation, though, so I kept my mouth shut. Which, I recalled, was my original plan, anyways.

My original plan didn't seem extensive enough, however, and while Pointy-face was expounding upon the inadequacies of British lager, I set about coming up with a believable backstory for myself. Obviously, I couldn't fake being British at this point, although I doubt I would have tried even had the option been open to me. In a room full of Canadians, or, better, Americans, I could have pulled off a British accent with impunity, but a true Brit would be able to identify it as affected within half a minute. I'd read _The Thirty-Nine Steps_ at some point in my wasted youth, and it seemed like sound advice to be able to play your role wholly and completely. The original _Executioner_ novels also influenced my approach to faking it – modify your existing personality and background only to the extent absolutely required to bluff someone. With all that in mind, I decided that I was ready for anything Pointy-face could throw at me.

My old man had wanted me to go into law. He said he thought I'd be really good at it. I always thought that that endorsement of my ability to lie through my teeth was a little distressing.

"You are an American, yes?"

"An American, no." I responded curtly, and Pointy-face finally seemed to look a little affronted. I tempered my response by continuing, "I missed being born a British citizen by about four years. Thanks to Sir John A, I reckon I'm as Canadian as they come."

"Ah, Canada. Well, I am afraid that I do not know much about Canada."

Well, if that wasn't typical? Just as I'd always suspected, the entire space-time continuum was ignorant about the second largest country on the planet Earth. On the other hand, "Canada? Well, I don't suppose there's all that much to know 'bout it. Land of beaver and bush, that about sums it up, I guess." I had to fight hard to suppress a snigger.

"Well then, my friend, you must let me buy you a drink of something more affable, so that you do not possess an unfortunate view of European tastes."

I shrugged, and he took it for assent, calling over the barmaid and ordering a brandy I was unfamiliar with. In short order, she set our drinks before us, and I swirled the dark liquid like a true connoisseur.

Pointy-face was watching me attentively, and after I had taken a sip, he smirked. "It is better, no?"

"It is."

"I must apologize, my friend, for I have not introduced myself. I am Vladimir Koppen. And your name, friend?"

Wow, now here was something I hadn't considered. Fortunately, I had been in the midst of taking another drink, and that bought me a few moments of consideration. Obviously, I couldn't give out "Janice" as a handle.

If my parents' first child _had_ been male, the unfortunate kid would have been named Andrew, after my maternal grandfather's patronymic, the harsh-sounding Andriukov. As it was, I narrowly escaped being named Andrea, and instead got stuck with the patronymic as a middle name. The interesting thing about the settlement of western Canada by eastern Europeans was that names often got garbled in the registry books, and the matronymic/patronymic traditions fell out of use. I always told my mother that if I ever embraced a homosexual lifestyle, it was her fault, for not giving me that extra "a". I'm convinced that my entire life would have been easier if I'd been named Andriukova, instead.

I decided, however, that I would put my unfortunate middle name to good use. "It's Lowell, Andrew Lowell."

"Well, then, Mr Andrew Lowell. It is a pleasure to meet you. Cheers."

We downed the last of our respective brandy in synchrony, and I managed not to wince. I'm not unfamiliar with liquor by any means – I've just never been able to get the hang of doing shots of anything.

Vladimir Koppen had leaned back in his chair. "Let us have another round, no? And you will tell me of why you are in London. And then we will have another, and I shall tell you of why I am in London. For we are both foreigners here, and does that not make us comrades, in drink, if not in arms?"

I blinked. The gist of it was more alcohol, so I nodded cautiously.

"So, what task is it that brings you to London?"

I didn't have a good answer for that one, so I stalled. "Well, you see, it all begins a while back, with an Irishman named Kootenai Brown. Of course, that wasn't his real name. Oh, the Brown bit was real enough, but I don't think his name really was Kootenai. But everyone always called him that, on account of how well he got on with the Indians. The mountain ones, the Kootenais, I mean." I stopped to take a sip of my drink, and to glory a bit in the shimmer of a plan that was coalescing in my mind.

"Which mountains are these, that you speak of?" Koppen looked perplexed, and I knew he had no idea where I was going with this.

"Oh, right, sorry. The Rocky Mountains. Over in western Canada. Not quite so far as Victoria, but a mite farther than Calgary."

He nodded, but I doubted he had any concept of the geography, which was fine with me. I was being confusing for a reason. "Anyway, about old Kootenai Brown. One day he got to talking with some Stoney Indians, and they told him about a place up in the mountains where tar just dripped out into a creek bed. So, old Kootenai went and had a look, and sure thing. So this place got to be called Oil Creek, and a fellow by the name of Aldridge eventually figured out how to make some money off of it."

My German companion was listening attentively, now.

"See, Bill Aldridge had himself a good idea. He went and bought some gunnysacks, and got some liquor jugs from the saloons in the area, and he went fishing for oil. Soaked it up right out of the water with them gunnysacks, squeezed it into the jugs, and then sold it in town at a profit. Last I heard, he was going all the way to Calgary with his jugs of oil."

"But this does not explain why you are on this side of the Atlantic."

"I'm getting to it." I took a deep drink, and wondered if I might not be playing too deep of a game. After all, just because there weren't any melting clocks, that was no guarantee that I hadn't screwed up time and future-history. I'd been this theoretical route before, though, and I was starting to get a tingly feeling at the back of my neck. Trying to think my way through the conundrum of time travel was too much effort at this point.

Screw it all. If my actions within the next half hour were going to warp the time continuum, God could take care of the fallout and make himself useful for once. If I was stuck here, I was going to have some fun with it.

"See, I have this idea about the way the earth works."

Koppen smiled into his glass, "I am sure we all do, Mr Lowell."

"Nope, that's not what I'm talking about. Say, did you ever put puzzles together?"

He nodded, his head tilted to one side, and a brow raised.

"Well, it seems to me, having looked at a few maps, Africa looks like it should fit up against South America, just like a puzzle. Now, there are other places that look like that too, but that's the best example. Anyway, it got me to thinking, and I reckon that the continents move around. Slowly, to be sure, but my bet is that they move around, break apart, and sometimes I'll even wager they collide."

Koppen was laughing at me now, utterly failing to pretend that he was only coughing. Finally, he wiped the corners of his eyes and shook his head at me. "That, sir, is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard."

"Well, that may be. But that wasn't really what I was getting to. No, the important bit is that colliding business. See, I've seen places in the mountains where the rocks are all bent and folded. And they all seem to be folded, more-or-less, towards the east. So, that fits in pretty well with my idea."

The German was looking confused again, and his voice dripped with incredulity. "But, what is the practicality of this?"

"I told you. I'm getting there. Now, if two big hunks of rock are going to collide, obviously, they've got to go somewhere afterwards, right? That Newton fellow's laws, you know? Anyway, suppose that one of the continents went up? I reckon it would look pretty much like a mountain, don't you? So, anyway, like I said, I got to thinking. What if that tar at Oil Creek isn't coming from the mountains at all, but from the stuff that the mountains are on top of?"

"I think, my friend, that you have had too much to drink tonight." Koppen was smiling again.

"No, no, hear me out. My idea is, if there's oil underneath the mountains, then it should be underneath the prairies, too, since the mountains are on top of the prairies. And that's my plan. I need someone to back me in finding it." I was having a hard time containing my glee – all I needed was Henry Ford to come up with his assembly line to provide some demand for a supply that I knew all about. I couldn't remember exactly why being trapped in the past had distressed me; from this vantage point, it rather looked like I was holding all the aces.

I was going to be rich.

I tossed back the whiskey that had materialized in front of me. It burned, and I winced hard, but at the same time, I felt a bit distanced from the sensation. It had loosened my tongue, anyway, and I was already well past losing the battle in maintaining a laconic attitude. "And you, Mr Koppen? Why are you here?"

"It is Dr Koppen, actually. I am here to meet with a colleague at Oxford. I am working on perfecting a map of the European climate."

"Oh. So, you're that Vladimir Koppen, are you? Wladimir with a "w"?"

He frowned. "You have heard of me, then?"

The part of my brain that wasn't pickled yet kicked me. Andrew Lowell wasn't supposed to know that! "Well, sure. I know some people with the GSC – scientific folks."

He seemed incredulous, and I felt a bit bad about playing dumb with him. I expect if I hadn't been rather sloshed, I would have been absolutely devastated by how daft I'd been acting – this man had done a lot of brilliant work in his lifetime. No. He _would do_ a lot of brilliant work. I wondered if I'd screwed it all up by spouting off a garbled version of plate tectonics. After all, it wouldn't become an acceptable scientific theory until the 1970s, despite the fact that Wegener would propose…

Holy shit. I had just remembered something more about my conversational partner. Holy Mother Mary on a motorbike straight to Hell.

I must have been staring at Wladimir Koppen rather glassily, because he stopped discussing climate zonation, and mentioned that I ought to seek a bed. I nodded dumbly, and he shook my hand again, before rising to leave.

The depths of my tankard didn't seem like they would be offering any profound revelations, despite how fixedly I was observing them. I was beginning to wish that my faculties were more in place, because it seemed to me that there was just the slightest possibility that I was responsible for bringing about an event in the future's history. Did that mean that there was such a thing as fate, after all? Were we all destined to march continuously through our lives with not the slightest vestige of free choice in defining our own existences?

I came to the conclusion that my head felt rather lopsided.

I waved the barmaid over. "Where do you shuppose – suppose" I was beginning to slur my speech, I noticed, "Where do you suppose that I might find lodging for this evenin'?" The good lady gave me directions for a building down the street, and I squinted at my billfold, counting out what I owed. It transpired that this endeavour was unnecessary, because Koppen had cleared my tab. I really _was_ feeling bad about acting like an ass towards him.

I struggled up to my feet, and made it out the door without major mishap. I didn't get much farther, though.

You know that joke about a drunk walking into a bar? I walked into a post. And yes, I said "ouch". Of course, it wasn't the lamp post's fault that it was there. I gave it an apologetic pat. "Hello, lamp-post, what'cha knowin'?" I slurred, "I've come to watch your flowers growin'". The God of Drunks wasn't a Simon and Garfunkel fan, it seemed. The ground loomed up to meet me, and I realized that I wasn't feeling very groovy anymore.

A pair of strong hands caught me before I kissed cobblestone. I tried to wrench away, and only succeeded in falling flat on my ass. Those hands were reaching for me, and a burst of adrenaline momentarily cleared the haze in my head. No one was allowed to touch me! Not without my permission, dammit!

No, that wasn't right. I was thinking like a woman again. But I wasn't a woman, I was a man. I was Andrew Lowell, not Janice. Or, maybe I wasn't a man, but I was supposed to be? Goddamn, what had possessed me to drink so much? There was something important here that I just wasn't comprehending. Fuck, brain, come on, work!

The jerk had managed to finally get a good grip on me, and had pinned my arms around behind my back. I tried to stomp on his instep, like they taught you in the self defence courses, but my legs were too wobbly for the move to be effective. I settled for swearing at him. "Get you fucking hands off of me, you miserable cock-sucker!"

"I think not," he said, gripping my wrists. His voice was low and dangerous, and I squinted to get a good look at my assailant. He was tall, heavily built, and the gaslight reflected off of the twin moons of his spectacles. The muttonchops would have struck me as absurdly funny if his fingernails hadn't been biting into my wrists.

"I should like to know how a reasonably intelligent young woman comes to be wearing someone else's boots, cursing and drinking like a sailor, and having cozy little chats with individuals whose associates are suspected of passing sensitive information to Caprivi's office."

So, what I want to know is, where the hell's the F9 button when you really need it?


	4. Jannie's Sugar Daddy

_A/N: Expect updates to be sporadic from this point on._

**Chapter the Fourth, in Which Jannie Finds a Sugar Daddy**

The first thing I became aware of was the noxious odour of thick cigar smoke. The second was the genteel clink of a spoon against the rim of a teacup. The third was the headache, and the fourth-- _Hang on a sec, Jan, _I interrupted the train of my observations, _We've been in this situation before, haven't we?_

The realization that the last time I'd regained consciousness like this, I'd been lying on cobblestones in the middle of Victorian London gave me a bit of a pause. Whatever I was laying on this time was rather softer, and a bit of hope took hold within me, fluttering like a butterfly trapped by my ribcage. I wasn't home, was I?

I began to open my eyes, but closed them abruptly, as my headache decided that I was better suited to the life of someone suffering from xeroderma pigmentosum. Why did it always have to be bright and sun-shiney anytime I was hung over? I suspected that if I ever worked up enough nerve to graph it, the weather forecast of sun would directly correlate with my drinking binges. I haven't done it yet, because I'm a bit scared that it might actually be true. If so, that would hint that there is a God – and he hates me.

Unpleasant thoughts like that are even more unpleasant when you think them with a pounding head, so I put it from my mind, and instead concentrated on determining if all of my limbs were attached. I was just wiggling my fingers when the clinking of the spoon stopped, and there was a distinct rustling of clothes. Whoever was in the room with me took a few steps, which I deduced from the fact that the floor creaked. I heard the sounds of curtain rings sliding along a rod, and hazarded opening my left eye.

It was dimmer, but I couldn't see a damn thing, having been relieved of my glasses. The figure near the window was just a blurry line, but I suspected it was male. That brought to mind the last thing I recalled – being manhandled outside of the Red Lion, and I abruptly pulled myself into a sitting position, casting a hand about for my glasses, which I promptly knocked off the low table beside me. I stood to retrieve them, and succeeded in doing nothing more than joining them upon the floor.

His shoes had moved into my field of view. "Fucking hell," I told them, around a grimace of pain. I was going to have a really colourful bruise on my shin in a day or two, I reflected. Oh well. The pain in my leg distracted me from the pain in my head for a few moments, and I closed my eyes again, letting my face sink down into the rug. All told, it was a posture of defeat.

The shoes didn't move.

After a few more moments of staring at them, I looked upwards, and noticed a hand extended towards me. If my head wasn't hurting quite so badly, I would have been more inclined towards spite, and would have ignored it. As it was, I rolled over, half sat, and reached up.

The man's grip was firm, and steady, a marked contrast to my own. He steered me towards a wing-backed chair, and pressed my glasses into my hands. I pushed them up my nose, and surveyed my captor.

As I'd feared, it was the guy from the evening before. But where he'd been threatening in the gloomy gaslight and rain, he now looked almost kindly. Although, that assessment could have been biased due to the disjointed joy I felt at having a cup of coffee pressed into my hands. I had to grip it with both hands to avoid sloshing it, and the smell was almost nauseating, but I knew I'd start feeling better after a few cups. The polite thing would have been to thank him, but as I didn't particularly feel like chatting it up, I ignored him, and merely took a sip, hoping it wasn't poisoned.

It was too sweet, but otherwise seemed copasetic. I swallowed another mouthful, and looked back over at the man. He had seated himself opposite me, and had unfolded a newspaper, apparently content to leave me to my own thoughts for a while longer. That suited me just fine, and I turned my attention back to the coffee cup.

I wondered, idly, how I was going to get out of this situation. Mr Muttonchops was sitting between me and the only door to the room, so I assumed, quite validly, I think, that escape in that direction was out of the question. The window? Maybe, but I had no idea how far off the ground we were, and now that I thought about, I didn't hear street noises, so it was likely that it was a bit of a drop. Besides, I wasn't even sure if I'd be fast enough. Every joint in my body seemed to be aching, and I had an awful crick in my back, no doubt from sleeping on the davenport. That, of course, raised the question of how I'd gotten here in the first place, and where _here_ was.

Funny, but hadn't I spent yesterday trying to figure out answers to the exact same questions? This circular trend in my existence was really beginning to bother me.

I drained the last of my coffee, and set the cup down. Muttonchops looked up, and raised a bushy eyebrow. "Would you care for another cup?"

I nodded, and then thought to add a qualifier: "No sugar, though."

He returned the cup to me, I returned to staring into it, and he returned to his newspaper. We were getting along splendidly, considering the circumstances.

I had almost finished working my way through the fourth cup by the time he finished reading the paper, and was feeling a bit more human. The little bit of pleasure I managed to scrape out of the recession of my headache was soon disrupted. Muttonchops was done the paper, and that apparently meant he was done playing nice.

"I believe, having given you sufficient time to compose yourself, that I shall now ask you a few questions. It will, I assure you, be better for you if you would do the honour of answering them succinctly, and promptly."

Just how badly could jumping out of a window really hurt? Not much, but the sudden stop at the bottom probably would, I decided. I nodded to indicate that I'd both heard and comprehended him.

"Very well then. It is singularly gratifying to discover that you are more compliant when sober."

I almost smirked.

"Let us start with your identity."

"Andrew Lowell."

"No, I think I should prefer your _actual_ name, if you please, Miss?"

"Miss Lowell. Janice, if you need to know." I couldn't remember how he'd discovered I was female – had it been when we were tussling in the street, or had he known earlier? I wasn't sure.

"Come now, such a surly disposition is unwarranted, my dear Miss Lowell. Moreover, it is quite unbecoming in a lady." His voice was softly mocking, and I could see a gleam of laughter in his pale eyes.

Two could play at this game. "Oh, are we being civilized and polite, then? In that case, I've given you my name, so what's yours?"

He grinned quickly – one moment he was, and the next he wasn't. It was unsettling. "I think, Miss Lowell, that I shall have you refer to me as Mr Michael Kemper."

"But that's not your real name, is it?"

"I'd not expected such perspicacity from a woman." He was mocking me again.

I decided not to let him have any more fun at my expense, so I settled for gazing at him with a flat expression of boredom. It was, I thought, a rather mature response, and would no doubt irritate him. Double win. Meanwhile, I took the opportunity to study my captor in more detail than I had previously.

He was, as I'd noted the evening before, heavily built, but had the look of a man gone slightly to seed. His seated position accentuated the swell of his paunch, and his hair had glints of silver in it. His entire appearance was one of gentility, from the watch chain at his waist, to the clean cut of his suit, but I wasn't fooled. This was no benevolent professor. This guy was tough, because even when I'm pissed out of my mind, I can still fight like a wildcat. Kevin, had he been around, would have been able to vouch for that one; I'd broken his nose once, during an inebriated disagreement. Like I said, we broke up a lot more conclusively than we started dating.

"How much of your conversation with Koppen was authentic?"

"What's he got to do with any of this?" More importantly, what had I gotten myself into? As far as I knew (and I had the benefit of a lot of reading behind me), Wladimir Koppen was a climatologist, and little more.

Kemper, or whoever he was, was beginning to look nonplussed. He stared at me in silence for what seemed an eternity, and when he did speak again, I got the impression he wasn't talking to me. "I begin to think that I may have been mistaken."

"Yes, probably," I put in.

He let his breath out harshly, an obvious sign of irritation and displeasure. "I have little patience for you impertinence, Miss Lowell. Give me an accounting of yourself."

"I don't see why I should, really. I'm not under arrest, am I?" This time I did smirk at him.

His eyes narrowed dangerously. "It can be arranged rather quickly, you'll find."

Well, that was food for thought. Just who the hell was I dealing with? It might, I reflected, be time for me to stop being a smartass, because in retrospect, bravado occasionally looks a lot like stupidity.

"Fine. You win. I'm Janice Lowell, everything I told Koppen about myself was absolutely true," it wasn't, but it had the benefit of sounding like the truth, which my real story didn't, "and until last night, I'd never laid eyes on the man. Whatever game is going on here, I've got no part in it."

He eyed me for a long time, and I began to feel highly uncomfortable beneath his scrutiny. Finally, he sighed, and lit a cigarette. "Well, there are a great many things that ring false about you, Miss Lowell, but I shall concede that I was in error in thinking you one of Germany's confederates. You might as well leave; I've little enough time as it is, without petty mysteries."

"So, I'm free to go, then?" I cast my gaze around the room, looking for poison arrow slots, spikes in the floor, or a giant rolling boulder, because I'd been fairly certain that I would need to break out the Indiana Jones moves to get out of this.

"Yes, get off with you." He gestured imperiously towards the door, and muttered something that sounded like, "Useless slag."

Well, that wasn't fair at all, by my reckoning. I'd been accosted, held against my will, questioned, and subjected to foul coffee. And besides all that, it was anticlimactic. At the very least, I thought I deserved some explanations. I was just about to say so, when the smarter part of my brain piped up and reminded me that the hand of cards I was playing with didn't lend itself well to bluffing. You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, and know when to run. Now was probably a really good time for the latter.

I had just grasped the cool brass of the doorknob when Kemper was apparently struck by serendipity.

"Wait." It wasn't quite an imperative. There was almost something questioning in his voice. I turned around, and found that he had risen from his chair, and was observing me with a peculiar gleam in his eye.

"You are quite alone here, aren't you? A stranger in a strange land, indeed." I didn't like the way this was going, and began slowly turning the doorknob. I noticed that my hand was a bit slick.

He took a few slow steps towards me, and I realized something about myself: I am a very fickle creature. Right then, I was willing to give up my comfortable, loving relationship with my compass, and have a tempestuous fling with a jackknife, or a can of bearspray. "And how do you know that, eh?" I said with false bravado.

He smiled, then, and it wasn't a nice smile. It was cold, and speculative, and his eyes never once met mine. Instead, I got the impression that he was appraising me, looking me over like a choice ham.

This guy, I decided, was a psychopath.

I was going to die.

He began to chuckle, and leaned in so that our faces were level. His breath smelt of tobacco, and his eyes locked with mine. "How do I know, Miss Lowell? Well, you've told me yourself. Not in so many words, perhaps, but you see, it is my business to read people like books, and to hear what is not said."

He finally broke eye contact, and I realized that I was shaking. He stepped back, and gave me another shark-like grin. "You are easily intimidated. Wise in a woman. But here is a philosophical question that I should like you to consider: are your actions defined by your gender?"

I shook my head. It was an automatic response, borne of clawing my way through the echelons of a profession that was a stronghold of men.

"Very good. Let us consider this, then. If your actions are not defined by your gender, why should you indulge in those that fit the stereotype? I seem to recall you playing the role of a man with considerable verisimilitude last evening."

Was that a question? I stared at him blankly for a few moments, and then wondered why I wasn't trying to make a run for it. In the time it took my brain to perambulate through those thoughts, Kemper had re-seated himself.

"Sit down, Lowell."

I found myself obeying, and didn't know why.

"Tell me, Lowell, do you define your gender, or do I?"

I finally found my voice again. "Say what?"

"Is your gender defined by who you think you are, or by my knowledge of who you are? Why is it that you acted with confidence in Koppen's presence, and yet shrink in mine? We are both men, we are probably of similar disposition, and certainly of similar physique. In fact, he most likely has the advantage over me, as I am rather older, and not so quick as I used to be. What is the difference, Lowell?"

Well, there were a lot of differences. First and foremost was the fact that Kemper was holding me captive, where Koppen had paid my tab. That wasn't what I said, though. Instead, the scientist in me (which I've long suspected is disjointed from everything else), answered: "Gender is defined by reproductive biology."

Kemper started laughing. After a few moments, he coughed, wiped a tear from his eye, and shook his head. "Classic!" He exclaimed. I didn't really think it was that funny. This entire situation, however, was. In an ironic sense, anyway.

But something that he'd said did make sense, in a twisted sort of way. Why _was_ I acting like a frightened schoolgirl? I'd been doing nothing but jumping from one irrational conclusion to the next, and the only thing I'd accomplished was to heighten my own unease. Hell, all along, I'd set the course of our interactions, by playing into his attempts at intimidation. And hadn't I been the one to react first with violence when he'd first encountered me? I'd been heading for the ground, and he'd grabbed me. And what had my first thoughts been? That I was drunk and effectively incapacitated, and therefore helpless. But why should I have been helpless? Was a guy just as helpless in that situation? In a theoretical sense, probably, but I doubted that guys ever stopped to think about it. After all, no one ever told guys to watch out for roofies in drinks and strangers in alleys. No one ever told guys to park their cars beneath a streetlight, and to look underneath as they were approaching them.

Huh. I blinked. Kemper had a point, and I immediately felt myself relaxing. He peered at me owlishly from beneath those bushy brows, and I almost laughed at the thought that less than five minutes ago, I'd been terrified by those eyes. Weird. But he was, I reminded myself, damnably perceptive, and that was cause not to let my guard down entirely.

I'm pathologically unable to take my own advice, but now was probably a good time to give it another go. Kemper's next words confirmed the validity of this new resolution. "I believe, Lowell, that I would be quite correct in summing you up as a nasty little liar. In fact, aside from your assertion that you don't know Koppen from Adam, there is not a single thing you've said that has the ring of veracity about it. But I freely admit that I observe a great deal more than most, and in that regard, you are really quite skilful at deception. I can't help but be intrigued by the possibilities." He trailed off, and gazed wistfully up at the ceiling. After a few moments, he continued, in a distant, thoughtful voice. "No agenda, no means, no confederates. With a little practise, a little shaping, a useful tool…"

Presumably, this one-sided conversation continued within the confines of his cranium. I was almost starting to feel a little left out, and was again contemplating the door and window when he decided that he was done ignoring me.

"I have a proposal for you, Lowell."

I stiffened, forced myself to relax, and then raised an eyebrow in his direction. "Sorry, mate, but I'm not the marrying sort." Maybe incompetence would make him think twice about whatever was turning the wheel behind his eyes.

That quick grin flashed again. He'd seen through my little act. "Correct me if I am wrong on any point. You are completely alone here," he waited for me to nod, "You've met with a bit of hardship since de-boarding, you've turned to petty thievery, you've no immediate prospects for employment, and you've no idea where to turn next." I didn't bother to correct him, and he evidenced a bit of ego in supposing that he'd been completely accurate. That was worthwhile noting; character flaws are the best places to look for a chink in someone's armour.

"This, then, is my proposal: I have another residence elsewhere, and it will be at your sole disposal. In return, I shall want your assistance in a few endeavours."

"You're going to need to clarify that, pal." This sounded like it was getting dodgier by the minute.

"I need an actor, Lowell. Someone to be out and about, a pair of ears, and eyes." That didn't sound too bad. "You'll be paid for your time, of course." Even better.

Still, "I dunno. Sounds dodgy. Sounds like you want a spy."

"That is, essentially, correct. Or, rather, I need someone with a flexible identity, and no reason to double-cross me."

Who the fuck was this Kemper fellow, anyway? "You're not with the official force, are you? You're not a cop."

"Let us simply say that I am a well-connected middleman. And let us also simply say that I am invaluable to both sides of the line, and that you've learned nothing that will endear you to either. Nor will you."

Shades of Hades, I was starting to think I was dealing with Mafia.

Cool.

There were, I supposed, worse things I could do for a living. And maybe this was an in to some big money. I needed big money, if I was going to take advantage of my knowledge of untapped petroleum and mineral resources. Besides all of that, Kemper had pointed out more than once that I was in a lonely position, and I rather suspected that my life expectancy would diminish if I made the wrong choice.

I was uncomfortably aware of that fact that I had just talked myself into something. I was also uncomfortably aware of the fact that Kemper knew what my decision was before I'd even opened my mouth. I said it anyway.

"Okay, I'm in."


	5. Jannie's New Digs

**Chapter the Fifth, in Which Jannie Investigates Her New Digs**

Hollingshead Lane was a bleak place. The houses were small, shabby, and crowded up to the very edges of their terraces, so that they seemed to loom out into the street. Little boxes made of ticky tacky, little boxes all the same. I shivered against a gust of wind, and stepped down from the cab, the metal of the key cool in my hand. _Welcome home, Jan._ Funny, but I didn't feel welcome.

I didn't expect the key to turn so smoothly in the lock, and I didn't expect the door to open quietly on well-oiled hinges. But then again, perhaps I should have. After all, a theatrically creaking door would have spoiled the funereal stillness of the Lane. I wondered if the course of my tenancy would be long enough for the door to develop a little personality, given some benevolent neglect.

The inside of the house was dark; blinds had been drawn across all the windows. I set about opening them, and in that way discovered the extent of my backyard. It was, like everything else in the Lane, a gloomy little spot, although a few bright dandelions struggled to be yellow beneath the heavy clouds. Despite being weeds, I've always thought of dandelions as a symbol of strength against adversity. Following that analogy, I suppose it's odd that I don't think of Round-up as a symbol for adversity. I suppose I ought to be careful – my roots are showing.

Nevertheless, the dandelions cheered me a bit, and I let myself out the back door to survey the matted tufts of old grass, the thistles blooming along the cracked path, and the weather-beaten fence that separated me from my neighbours. It wasn't a large space (my practiced eye guesstimated that it was probably no larger than a two-kegger event), but it had potential, if one ignored the outdoor privy.

I was admiring the gnarled tree that stood in the far corner, and thinking to myself that it was pleasantly gothic, when I realized that I had started to make plans for this little space. A raindrop splashed down on my exposed neck, and trickled between the planes of my shoulders. I sneered at the garden, shook my head, and went back in. This was temporary; I had to keep telling myself that.

Kemper's upkeep of the house and limited grounds was at first glance a study in extremes. He'd thought to oil the door, but hadn't given the garden more than a glance. He'd drawn blinds, perhaps to discourage vandals and transients, but hadn't washed the windows. I heaved a great sigh. Men.

I had my work cut out for me, it seemed.

A cursory walk-through revealed thick carpets of dust over everything. Only the attic, a sparse, draughty place with an unfinished floor, lacked a furry grey coating. This circumstance was probably due to the slight breeze that blew in beneath the eaves. I'd have to mention that to Kemper, the next time I saw him.

The ground floor consisted of the narrow entrance, a room just off it that contained a beaten-up chair and a lopsided shelf (I dubbed it "the office"), a small bedroom, and the kitchen, where I stood now. The gas stove in the corner was the only appliance, and the room seemed sparse. A fridge and dishwasher I could probably live without, but a blender? How the hell are you supposed to make pina coladas without a blender? I just wasn't cut out for this time travel business. Oh well, I thought, I might as well get busy.

I took off my blazer and vest, and draped them over the back of a kitchen chair. They weren't particularly nice garments anymore, but they were all I had. My mind seemed curiously devoid of thought or feeling as I gazed at the sum total of my worldly goods. After a moment, I shook my head, and set about routing out a bucket and cloth.

The logical place to find such a beast as a bucket was beneath a sink – it's their natural habitat, you see. Not having evolved appendages, the docile bucket is by necessity a sessile organism, and must gain sustenance from its immediate surroundings. And everyone knows that a bucket likes nothing more than a hearty repast of pipe drippings.

I discovered the error in my logic almost immediately, in that there weren't any pipes connected to the sink. Come to think of it, there weren't any taps, either. This wasn't a sink at all – it was a wash basin.

This deeply disconcerted me. I hadn't fallen further back in time without realizing it, had I? Because I was quite certain that London had plumbing by now. And yet, this particular house showed no evidence of such – there was no indoor sewage, if the privy out back were taken as evidence, and there was no water line in, by the lack of taps. But then, how did they get water?

A dim remembrance of leaning against a cool, damp wall in Baba Katya's basement flickered in the back of my mind, and I glanced down at the floor, certain that I held a thread to the mystery. Nothing in the kitchen looked suspect, and the office had had a rug. The bedroom? That would be just daft. I went back to the entry, and scanned about, wishing that there was a bit more light available than that provided by the grey sky. A few more frustrated minutes of squinting at the gritty wood floor revealed nothing. I glared at the offending wash basin upon re-entering the kitchen, and then noticed an alcove off to the side.

It housed a door, and I opened it, stepping into a long, narrow room that looked remarkably similar to Baba Katya's own kitchen pantry. I grinned in satisfaction when I saw the heavy steel ring in the centre of the floor. I gave it a mighty tug, and the floorboards lifted to reveal a set of steps that disappeared into a dark hole.

I always did want to go spelunking.

About halfway down the stairs, I rediscovered a fear of the dark, or, more accurately, a fear of falling on something pointy while stumbling around in the dark. It was really all completely logical like that, I assure you. It had not one iota to do with the fact that I had jokingly asked "Any monsters down there?" and received no reply, which only meant that they were sentient, as opposed to nonexistent.

I sat down on one of the lower shelves that stood against the pantry walls, and contemplated the hole in the floor leading to the cellar. Like all of my gear, I knew exactly where my Petzl headlamp was. It was neatly packed in its stuff sack, and was sitting quite near the top of my Excursion Tickle Trunk, which was right beside the bookcase, next to the television stand. More than a hundred years in the future.

Bemoaning my existence wasn't going to get anything done, so I hauled myself to my feet, and began searching for something to make a torch out of. As luck would have it, there were candles on one of the top shelves, and a box of matches beside the stove in the kitchen. Things were finally going my way.

Once again, I started down the stairs. The cellar didn't extend underneath the entire house; that much was apparent by the relatively small dimensions. There was a root bin along the wall at the very bottom of the stairs, and I was pleased to note that there were a few potatoes in it, and a lonely, forsaken onion. That took care of supper, anyway. The opposite wall had shelving on it, which was occupied by several dusty jars of preserves and a couple wine bottles. But there, just ahead of me, was what I'd been hoping to see: a flat, concrete wall with a spigot a foot up from the floor. This was about as old-school as it got: a cistern. I positioned the attendant bucket beneath the spigot, and opened the tap. The water that flowed out smelled stale, but there were no obvious algal blooms, and it wasn't particularly off-colour. I counted it as a success, and made my way back up the stairs.

I started with the kitchen, pulling the heavy cast iron skillets and pots from their ceiling hooks. I tried wiping out the film of dust, but whoever had seasoned the cookware had been inept at it, and the dust balled up along the greasy surfaces. That was ironic – 21st century girl knows how to season cast iron better than a Victorian. I sent up more silent thanks to memories of Baba Katya, and wrung out my cloth in disgust. The old adage was true wherever a person went: if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

I spent half an hour dismantling the pantry in a search for soap, and thereby discovered rancid lard, flour with mealworms in it, oatmeal that mice had been into, salt, and pepper. Not much of a chef, this Mr Kemper. Although, really, the more time I spent in this domicile, the less I was able to picture him living in it. The rooms I'd been in earlier were obviously his primary address. I wondered that he kept such a rundown, ratty old house as this, and assumed that he'd probably been letting it.

Regardless of the identity of the tenants before me, I condemned them as inept, and stalked back out to the kitchen. I pulled my outer garments back on, and set off to find myself a chemist.

It was an easier task than I'd imagined; I'd only had to walk five blocks. It was a small shop, tucked up beside a green grocer. The bell tinkled pleasantly as I entered, and I stopped to admire the neat cleanliness of my surroundings. The lighting was electric, and it gave me a bit of a pause to see the entire shop lit by incandescent bulbs. I shuddered a bit, upon realisation that I was becoming inured to the grime, grit, and darkness of my situation.

"Good afternoon. Is it quite windy out, then?" The shopkeeper had emerged from a back room, and was staring at me expectantly from behind thin square frames. "You seem to have lost your hat," he elaborated.

"Oh, no that was earlier today." I answered absently, not even surprised anymore at the glib way that lies dripped off my tongue. I was getting good at this. I glanced around at his wares, hoping he might get the drift and leave me alone.

There was nothing quite like motivated salesmanship, though, and my disinterest in conversation didn't faze him. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"I need a nice, abrasive soap, and sodium hypochlorite."

He moved towards the back of the shop, and produced a tin bucket. This, apparently, was the soap, because he set it on the countertop, and asked me to repeat the chemical I'd asked for. I did, and he looked nonplussed.

I tried again. "Chlorine bleach?"

His face brightened, and I felt hopeful, until he opened his mouth. "Oh, you must mean slaked lime! Yes, I do have some, although probably not enough to damp down a large septic leak, if that's what you need it for. I really only carry enough for day-to-day use."

I felt horror welling up from within me. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Septic leaks?

"No, no, I don't need slaked lime. You're sure you don't have sodium hypochlorite?"

"Quite sure; I've never heard of such a compound."

I closed my eyes, and tried to visualize the equation. Something wasn't balancing, and I felt a bit stupid when I realized that it was an electrochemical reaction. I sighed, and wondered how dangerous it would be to build a crude battery, and run a few hundred volts of current through a salt water solution. There are old amateur chemists, and there are bold amateur chemists, but there are no old, bold ones. Bleach wasn't worth the risk. "Got any iodine?"

"Lugol's iodine, you mean?"

"Depends on what's in it." The chemist looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. I wondered if I'd said something wrong. Maybe the name was commonplace, and I'd just revealed myself as decidedly out of touch with the times.

"Elemental iodine and potassium iodide, five percent and ten percent, respectively."

I nodded. "That'll do. That and the soap. And some sodium bicarbonate. Oh, and I don't suppose you have any diatomaceous earth?"

He did, and I bought more than I needed at present, because it's useful for filtering some fine solutes, and I had no idea how much chemistry I'd be playing at over the next few weeks. I ought to have given myself a mental smack for thinking of weeks, but the thought didn't occur to me until I was almost back at Hollingshead Lane, and by then it seemed a bit after the fact.

I warmed water (more thanks to Baba Katya for teaching me how to light a gas stove), poured it into the washbasin, added a dollop of the sticky, chunky white soap, and poured in some iodine. Resourcefulness, thy name is Janice. It was time to get down to business.

The pots and pans were first, and almost last. About halfway through, I was ready to scream. My fingernails were soggy and abraded, my hands were wrinkled, my hair was sticky and greasy, and kept flopping in my eyes, my starchy white shirt wasn't starchy anymore, and I just wasn't cut out for this. Damn it all, I was a liberated woman of the 21st century! I was an academic! I was representative of the intellectual elite of my generation! I was too good for this! I was made for better things, for higher purposes! I was…

I was scrubbing pots.

I felt a bit disgusted when I found myself accidentally admiring the way in which the kitchen was shaping up. I'd finished scrubbing down the cookware, I'd wiped down the cabinetry, and the floor was blond and gleaming again, having been subjected to a coarse slurry of diatoms and some elbow grease. My palms were smarting from that last task, and my back ached something fierce. I decided to put my momentary lapse in principles down to exhaustion.

The sun had long since set, and after some fumbling, I'd figured out how to turn on the gas lighting. Every now and then the light would flicker a bit, which was irritating, but something I could get used to. The light was warm, and made the kitchen seem inviting, especially now that the suspended cookware gleamed, and the brick walls were free of their greasy-furry grime.

As the kitchen chair that I had straddled began to cut off the circulation in my right leg, I realized that I wasn't quite as tired as I'd thought. Instead, I became aware of the fact that the tension in my shoulders was almost pleasant, as though I'd put in an hour or two on the elliptical trainer. A hot shower and a massage, and I might start thinking that all was right in the world. I snorted, and decided to attend to the growling in my stomach; instead of dwelling on my wants, I could work on satisfying my needs.

I tromped back down the stairs to capture the vegetables I'd seen earlier. If vegetables had ever evolved sentience, those four potatoes and their onion friend would have known that the final hour before dawn was upon them. I scrubbed them up, peeled the onion, and chopped the whole lot into coarse slices. I put a glop of the rancid lard in the bottom of the skillet, tossed in the spuds, and waited for the whole lot to sizzle. The most important thing that I took away from introductory university biology labs was the knowledge that heat kills most bacteria and protists. As a typical college student, this simple fact has served me well. It's important to remember that bacteria are composed of many of the same proteins we are. Technically, the longer something sits in your fridge, the higher its value as a source of protein, provided you heat it up high enough to break cell walls and denature it. To say the very least, the fact that the lard was slightly off didn't bother me as much as it could have, and those potatoes were starting to smell awfully good.

It was as I was setting the pan on the table that I heard a faint growling from around the front of the house. I abandoned my meal for a moment, and went into the office to peer out the front window, into the street. The clouds of dust that my footsteps had stirred made my nose tickle, and I fought back a sneeze as I observed the scene before me.

Michael Kemper did not look pleased. He was holding a large, soft-cornered leather bag in front of him like a shield, and eyeing up the snarling dog that was approaching him from the side of the house, hackles raised and teeth gleaming.

I wrenched open the window, and stuck my head out with a cheery grin. "And how are you this fine evening, Mr Kemper?" Both of the combatants looked towards me. The dog stopped growling, and abruptly sat, tongue lolling, and a look that I could have mistaken for boredom on its shaggy features. "Take off, you hoser", I said. I qualified the statement by informing Kemper that the door was open, and he could let himself in.

I sneezed, and went back to my supper.

Kemper paused a moment at the entrance to the kitchen, and cast his gaze around. "Well, you're quite domestic, aren't you, Lowell? Even in spite of the tongue in your head."

I gave him a Trudeau salute, and speared another potato.

He sighed, and set his bag down as he seated himself across from me. He stared at me fixedly for several minutes as I masticated, apparently waiting for me to finish chewing my supper before he spoke to me. I began choosing each successive slice of potato or onion with more care, drawing out the procedure. I had just gotten into a good rhythm of two chunks of potato between each slice of onion when my audience abruptly tired of the show.

"Tomorrow morning," Kemper began, "you will clothe yourself in these garments," he gestured at the bag, "and you will go to the address listed on page 27 of this book." He drew a thin, black volume out of the bag. "There you will enquire as to the whereabouts of a Mr Samuel Henslowe. You will be told that he is out at the tobacconist's."

I reached for the salt shaker, and rolled my eyes at Kemper in exasperation. "Why the hell would I ask where he is if I already know where he is?"

Kemper gave me a disgusted look. "You are asking for the benefit of the person following you. Do try to use your brain. I'm aware of the fact that being a woman, this is a somewhat more difficult task for you, owing to the smaller nature of the organ, but I should have thought you capable of following orders, at the very least."

I narrowed my eyes at him, and took a vicious bite.

He surveyed me dispassionately, and then continued. "From said address you will go, not to the tobacconist's, but to the Kensington address listed on page 31. There you will walk past the house, pausing, for a count of no more than 20 seconds, at the terminus of the hedge.

"Afterwards, you shall make your way into the alley behind the homes on the opposite side of the street, where you will be met by an older man who will have the letters KRS tattooed upon the wrist of the hand he extends to you. He will show you in to one of the houses, and your task until he returns that evening will be to observe, from a second storey window, any and all persons who pass through the street. You will record all of these observations in the book that will be provided to you. You _can_ write, I hope?" He asked it as if it were an afterthought. I nodded, and he rose from his seat, apparently satisfied.

The dog growled at him again as he left. I smirked, and decided that it might be useful to have a Kemper-detector. I scooped the last few spuds out the office window, and the mutt thumped his tail against the side of the house as he scarfed them down. He looked up at me expectantly once he'd finished.

"Sorry, dude, that's all I've got tonight," I apologized. "Shabby of me, isn't it? Still, if you stick around for awhile, I ought to be able to rustle up something more substantial tomorrow night."

The dog continued to gaze at me, and seemed to nod as he licked his chops.

"Well, if you're going to hang here, I suppose I can't just call you "dog", eh?"

He cocked his head.

"Hosehead." I tried it out. "Yeah, that'll work."

I yawned, closed the window, and decided to call it a night. After all, I had to work in the morning, and I suspected that my boss was a bit of a dick about silly things like punctuality.


	6. Jannie Goes on Assignment

_A/N: Hi, I'm back. This chapter is probably the worst of the lot in terms of offending virgin ears. But hey, if you've managed to get through the first five, you're probably an old hand at this sort of thing. Jesting aside, seriously, if you're offended by coarse language, you should probably avoid reading further. I still hold that the story overall does not need to have a high rating, but this particular chapter required very precisely obnoxious characterization. _

_Though it should go without saying, I like feedback as much as the next person, and truly appreciate anyone who takes the time to leave me their thoughts._

**Chapter the Sixth, in which Jannie Goes on Assignment**

My difficulty with mornings is not so much in the waking up as in the getting up. Having realized that my essential nature is typified by periodic laziness and general lack of ambition, I've developed an entire arsenal of methods by which to rouse myself out of the bedclothes. The most effective has always been the enticing aroma of coffee.

Needless to say, automatic percolators had not been invented in 1891.

I flopped over in the narrow bed, trying to find a comfortable position that would allow me to go back to sleep until the coffee had perked. Instead, I found the floor, and after a howl of pain, remembered that there would be no coffee forthcoming.

Today was not off to a good start.

I contemplated the injustices of my existence while cleaning my teeth with an index finger dipped in a paste of baking soda and diatoms. I don't recommend it. Enamel and dentine, beyond a few differences in crystal lattice structure (those being a function of organic deposition), are very similar in nature to apatite. As minerals go, apatite is a lot softer than the silica tests of pelagic protists. Given enough time, there was a fairly good probability that I could grind through the enamel on my teeth with the diatoms. I rinsed my mouth, and sternly informed myself that I had no intention of being here long enough for that probability to become statistically significant.

I stumbled back to my bed, and crawled in. Now that my tongue didn't feel fuzzy, the lure of another horizontal hour or so was hard to pass by. Unfortunately, cleaning my teeth had brushed some of the early-morning cobwebs out of my brain, and try as I might, I couldn't get a slinking fear of Michael Kemper out of my head. When that fear began to trickle down the back of my throat and pool in the bottom of my stomach, I decided that enough was enough, and swung my legs over the edge of the bed.

A chance glimpse in the small oval mirror on the vanity opposite of me informed me that my hair was in desperate need of a washing. I pulled my boots on, and then, feeling a bit exposed in a house that Kemper presumably had a key to, pulled my trousers on, and half-buttoned my shirt over them. My natural tendency is to laze around in the semi-nude all morning, perhaps donning an oversized ("one size fits all"? Hah!) dressing gown for the sake of propriety when fetching in the _Edmonton Journal_. This perceived necessity of actually putting clothing on before noon irked me, and I stomped down the stairs to the cistern with some vigour.

I was working myself into a proper snit by then, and I masochistically refused to waste time heating the water. Instead, I lathered up my hair, and poured a cold stream over my head, whilst leaning into the wash basin. Soon, the suds were gone, and my teeth were aching from clenching them against chattering. I snarled in disgust over my wet collar, and wondered how I was going to affect any semblance of respectability. I recalled, then, the Gladstone bag that Kemper had left, and curiosity nibbled a hole through my rage.

The clothing it contained was perfectly utilitarian. There was a slightly wrinkled man's shirt in white cotton, a pair of woollen trousers, and a rough, tweed pea jacket. There was also, at the bottom of the bag, a pair of ridiculously thick glasses, which magnified the size of my eyes when I tried them on. I shook my head at the bug-eyed spectacle I made in the oval mirror. Just call me Bubbles, I thought with a wry grin. I changed into the new pants, pulled on the thick, knobbly socks, and, in unrolling the cotton shirt, discovered that Kemper had been more than thorough. I didn't need to do much guessing at the function of the cotton bandages that had been tucked into the shirt.

I'd never thought of my breasts as being particularly conspicuous before, but in trying to bind them back, I became intimately familiar with just how much fatty mammary tissue I actually had. I'd manage to get one boob adequately compressed towards my armpit, and in getting the bandage pinned in place, the other would pop out over the top. By the time I finally managed to get everything tucked and pinned, I was more than ready to have the bloody things cut off. This was deeply unsettling, because I've always been very touchy about my lack of frontal protrusion. A week ago, if someone had suggested I might consider breast reduction, I'd have clasped my chest protectively, screamed in horror, and run as far and fast as my legs could take me. This, I suppose, just goes to show that I'm capable of having a change of heart, every now and then.

I finished adjusting my clothing, and grimaced at the mirror. It had a sort of warp at the top, which stretched my face out, and made my forehead bulge. Despite the glass' imperfections, I had to admit that I looked a lot more masculine with my hair slick and parted to one side, not to mention clothes that were actually meant for a man, and not just a twenty-first century perversion of fashion. There was a problem, though. I rubbed my hand along my whisker-less jaw line, and wondered what I was going to do about it.

I spent several minutes in contemplation. Well, not really, but that sounds better than saying that I spent several minutes staring blankly at the wall in front of me and having absolutely nothing occur to me. I finally roused myself from my mental lethargy and decided that I'd have to simply pass for exceptionally clean-shaven.

It was as I was flipping through the address book Kemper had left me that the solution presented itself: I'd go clean-shaven. I grinned, and swept into the kitchen in search of a reasonably sharp knife. A few shallow nicks and cuts later, and I looked like I'd shaved in the dark with a dull razor blade. Perfect.

I had a bad moment then, remembering how Doc sometimes forgot to pull off the little bits of toilet paper that he stuck along the angle of his jaw where he tended to cut himself shaving. I felt a horrible clenching in the pit of my gut, and sat down on the edge of the bed, doubled against it. I breathed in slowly through my nose, and exhaled with great care. I was cool, this was all cool, everything was cool.

Time to pull myself together and go to work.

I consulted the address book (which contained more than mere addresses) again, before tucking it into the deep pocket of my coat. There was a dusty woollen cap abandoned in the hall closet, and I appropriated it on my way out the door, brushing it off as I emerged into the foggy grey light of the early morning.

Hosehead almost scared the daylights out of me when he shoved his cold nose into my hand. I covered my start by perching the hat on my head at a jaunty angle. "Whadya think, Hosehead? Do I look sufficiently bland enough to get away with a more rakish tilt to the hat?"

He sneezed. I sighed, and scratched his ears. "See you later, you hoser. I'll fetch some grub on my way back this evening, aright?"

The dog thumped his tail against my leg, and I felt immeasurably better as I set off down the pavement. I wasn't all alone here after all. Even a scruffy mutt was some comfort.

I paid attention to the streets as I passed them, filing them into my memory, and occasionally pausing to visualize the crude map Kemper had drawn in the address book. I was just beginning to suspect that I'd gone wrong somewhere when I saw a stained brass plate announcing that the shabby tenements on my right were Bracefitch Court. I scanned the row for number 12, and then ascended the steps to rap on the door.

A thin, mousy slip of a woman pulled the door open, and planted her hands on her hips without so much as a "Good morning". She glared at me, her lips pressed tight.

"Henslowe in?" I asked, determined to be as rude as she was expecting me to be.

"'E's gone down to the tobacconist's. What business you got wi' 'im?"

"None of your concern." I turned on my heel, and strode off with a smart precision that didn't match my rough dress.

Out of sight of the ramrod little woman, I slowed to a lazy swagger, allowing my knees of loosen up and legs to bow a little. If you've spent any time at all in Edmonton, you'd almost certainly notice the plethora of cowboys. Ninety percent of them are wannabe frauds, but most of them are damnably good at it. It takes more than a Stetson to affect this particular vanity – there's a certain walk, a loose-kneed "I've just gotten off a horse" swagger that I was quite accomplished at performing. In my defence, I am, actually, in the small percentile that would know how to climb into a saddle. Admittedly, I couldn't claim to have a legitimate reason for my walk this morning, but it suited my mood. I was an arrogant, tough, shit-kicker and people were going to get out of my bloody way, even if I was wearing stupid glasses.

It's surprising how well having the proper attitude for the type of neighbourhood you're in actually works. Fortunately, just when I thought I'd vomit if I had to pass another open sewer, the route my map plotted out for me got more upscale. It wasn't a dramatic shift – just a few simple things, like the streets being cleaner, the occasional brighter, newer-looking cab that rolled past me, a house with a fresh coat of paint here, an apartment with shiny new numerals on it, there.

Soon, I'd come to the street corner where Kemper indicated I should take a cab. It didn't make sense to me, walking all that way just to get a cab, when I could've caught one outside of Bracefitch. I could only assume that Kemper had some mysterious reason aside from wanting me to wear out my shoe leather. Although, given that he seemed the sadistic sort, I suppose that I shouldn't completely rule that out as a motivating factor.

I waved my arm in the air, feeling foolish, but it was apparently the done thing, because a cab did stop in front of me. "Where to?" the cabbie called down at me.

"83rd and 7th, Kensington," I said, keeping my voice low as the book had instructed me. I clambered up over the wheel, pulling the door closed behind me. I probably didn't project much dignity in doing so, but at least I didn't fall ass over teakettle.

Kensington was a lot farther than I expected it to be, given that the cab was – from the amount of jolting and jostling – moving at a good clip. By the time the cabbie peered down at me to demand the fare, my buttocks were thoroughly bruised. I got out without the spry little hop I had accomplished getting in, and my cowboy swagger looked more like a limp as I set off to my next assignment. I suspected that riding in cabs was a lot like riding a horse: you had to get into the motion of it, or you were going to end up sore. I fervently hoped that I wouldn't have to endure enough cabs to get used to it before I woke up in glorious modernity.

I had to consult the address book again after getting out of the cab, and to my dismay found that there was another long walk ahead of me. I sighed, and then decided to be philosophical about it. At least the locale was pleasanter, this time. The houses were larger, their inhabitants obviously more well-to-do. It reminded me, really, of a well-kept suburbia. I set off at a brisk pace, and even managed to whistle a few bars, half under my breath. The sun had broken through the gloom, and I felt rather more cheerful than I had for the past couple of days.

It didn't take me long to reassess, and sink back into my dissatisfaction with my current condition. Kemper – the bastard – had me following a route that led not past the well-kept front lanes, but rather through what I suspected could be termed "mews". The smell of horseshit soured my stomach somewhat, just when I'd been thinking that breakfast would taste mighty good.

I was only too grateful when, upon consulting the map in the address book again, I found that I was nearly at my destination. Another block saw me shuffling past the hedgerow in question. I loafed at the end of it for the appointed twenty seconds, and then ambled into the alley opposite, as per my instructions.

This alley was deserted, save for a single, battered old specimen of humanity who lounged against the brick wall, idly sucking a drooping end of his moustache, and fumbling some tobacco into his pipe.

"'Morning," he mumbled, as I approached. "Name's Carson."

I offered my hand, and noted that he did, in fact, have the letters KRS tattooed on the hand he extended in return. "I'm Lowell," I responded.

"Yeh, got that figured. Mister Kemper told me who I was to be expecting today."

I raised a brow at this. Why did everyone seem to know what the game was, except me? I didn't ask him that, though. Instead: "So, I get to watch the street?"

"Eager to get started, are you?" he emitted a dry, raspy chuckle. "Can't say as I envy you none. It's a right dull job, innit Jake?"

A third party had joined us, emerging from the back door of the building whose shadow we were gathered in. "So this is Kemper's young pup, is it?" The newcomer, Jake, I presumed, was a weedy, shifty-eyed sort, that somehow I suspected I didn't want standing behind me. He scratched the uneven stubble protruding from his chin, and looked me over, head to toe.

When he'd completed this scrutiny to his satisfaction, he removed a dented cigarette case, and plucked out a cigarette for himself, before offering the case to me. I declined, and he shrugged. "Got a match?" he asked Carson.

We stood in silence for a bit after that, as both Carson and Jake satisfied their respective nicotine addictions. Jake appeared to be enjoying his cigarette with something approaching sexual gratification. "It's not so much as it's dull up there, it's the not smoking that gets to a fellow. Were I you," he turned to me, "I'd have me a ciggy now, 'cos you sure will be sore with wanting one after a while. That's the first rule, you see. You can't smoke. Kemper, he thinks someone could smell tobbacky from the street if they passed by close enough, and this house is empty-like, right?"

"'Cept for the rats," Carson put in helpfully, "And they don't smoke "ships"."

Jake snorted, and then continued, "Other rules you got to know about, is you can't move around in front of that window on no account, you can't be drinking or drunk when you're watching, and you better grip your cock awful tight, 'cos you can't step out back for a piss 'til Carson here comes on this evening. You're responsible, lad, you hear me? _Responsible_, for sitting by that window and keeping a sharp eye out. 'Cos, Lord, you miss something that the good doctor gets up to, and we're all off the payroll. Understand?"

I nodded. Who was "the good doctor"? I didn't ask.

"'Course, we gots our little tricks, eh Jake?" Carson grinned toothlessly.

"Oh, aye. Kemper never said nothing at all 'bout newspapers. And you can't blame a man wanting to better himself keeping up with politics and all. Sure you don't want a ciggy, lad?"

I declined again, and Jake finished his in silence. Finally, he ground the butt under his heel, and nodded to Carson. "Well, we ought to go finish that other job, I'm thinking." He raised his eyebrows significantly.

"Just up those stairs, there, Lowell." Carson pointed, and then the two walked off down the alley. Mindful of Jake's warning to keep my eyes on the street, and suddenly nervous that no one had been watching since he'd come down, I fairly darted up the indicated stairs.

The room in which I was to spend the better part of my day was dark and cluttered with packing crates. Beyond that, I could say little enough about it, because I promptly seated myself on an overturned crate, and turned my attention to the view that the narrow window afforded. I was determined to be good at this job, even if the skill set was so modest as to be embarrassing.

The street was a residential one, and the neighbourhood seemed sleepy. A maidservant trotted up the street once, and later a cab came rolling through without stopping. Eventually, the maidservant came back, laden with purchases. A portly gentleman emerged from a house across the way, smoked a pipe, and then re-entered the domicile. Noting down each of these events seemed a bit silly, but I faithfully recorded every one, and made a little note of the time, as well.

The book I wrote in had been propped against the crate I was sitting on, and the page it was open to was filled with Jake's crabbed handwriting. His descriptions were similar to mine, if a bit more salacious. I couldn't see the point of mentioning how large the maid's breasts were (apparently she'd been out earlier that morning), so my own notes were likely deficit in regards to being entertaining reading material for Carson.

Very little happened out in the street, so after a while, I found myself leafing through the book. Some of the observations were genuinely amusing, as in the case of the "funny little gimp with a nose squashed as flat as a pig's", and others were highly informative by their frequency. By tallying up the number of occurrences of each repetitive individual, I began to get a feel for who the occupants of the houses were.

I suspected that "the good doctor", whoever he was, was probably the individual who showed up most curiously throughout the pages. Whereas most of my associates' observations were highly descriptive, there were several that were as simple as "10:35, Looks like he's gone to his club. Dressed well, but hasn't got his bag." Here was our target, most likely.

It annoyed me, though, that "the good doctor" wasn't as well described as the way the maid's breasts strained the front of her dress. The lack of a complete description was maddening, because how was I to know who I was supposed to be paying particular attention to?

Ultimately, I settled for making painstaking notes about the appearances and habits of every single being that ventured within my view. It took some of the edge off the boredom, anyway.

The day waned, and aside from a flurry of activity at noon, and another just before dinner, my workday remained stupefyingly dull. I took a particular vicious pleasure in writing, in the most detailed manner possible, of the lamplighter's progress up the street, and had just started describing the stray cat that was meandering down the pavement, when I heard the stair creak behind me.

From the lingering odour of pipe smoke, I deduced that it was Carson, finally come to relieve me from the ennui. "Alright, then, off with you. No, no, take the book down. Jake's waiting for you," he rasped.

Curious. Nevertheless, I did as I was told. Jake was, indeed, waiting outside, puffing away at another cigarette. "Did you bring the book?" he asked, by way of greeting.

I handed it to him, and he tucked it into a pocket inside his coat. He drew in a long lungful of smoke, and exhaled gustily before explaining. "So, I guess maybe you don't know, but on Fridays, we take the book back to Kemper, and he gives us another one. And it's got to be two of us that do it, so we always have a third person on Fridays, so as to have someone to stay behind and keep watch. Need a ciggy yet?"

I shook my head, and followed Jake's lead down the dark alleyways. After a while, we emerged into a well-lit side street, and I was just about to strike up a conversation when he suddenly stiffened at my side. "Aww, fuck," he moaned, "If it isn't the goddamned bobbies."

I could just make out two uniformed officers of the law approaching from ahead of us. "I take it this is bad?"

"Christ, yes. They've been on the lookout for me since--" He stopped, mid-sentence.

A part of me thought that it might be a good thing if Jake cooled his heels in a jail cell somewhere. The more tactical side of my brain realised that Kemper wouldn't be pleased about that, and especially wouldn't like the loss of this – apparently – very important book. I grasped Jake's arm. "I've got a plan," I muttered.

He glanced back at the approaching officers. They were, in fact, somewhat nearer. "Well, let's hear it, then."

"If I lean on you, stumble around a bit, and act like I'm pissed to the gills, I'll bet they pay more attention to me than they do to you. After all, what's more interesting? A noisy public nuisance, or the concerned friend getting him home to his wife?" I grinned.

He looked uncertain, but nodded anyway.

I began to drag my left foot along, and occasionally pitched towards my right, which necessitated Jake gripping both my shoulder, and my shirt collar. I mumbled away in an incoherent monotone, occasionally punctuated with a loud "An' then she said" that faded off into more gibberish.

As we came upon the officers (or perhaps they came upon us – I'd slowed our progress considerably), I began to get louder, and gesticulated wildly as I described "the biggest, most be-yoo-tee-ful tits yeh ever did see". I flailed my arms in emphasis, and overbalanced forward. One of the officers reached out an arm to help Jake set me to rights. "Thank yeh kindly" I slurred, patting his arm.

"There a problem, here?" the other officer was fingering his nightstick.

"No sir," I said with great, drunken dignity, "Why, I was just telling my friend here…" A spirit of deviltry took me then, and I broke into horribly off-key singing, "I like liquor and whoooores, liquor and whores. Cig'rettes and dope and mustard and--"

"Hey, alright, then, enough of this racket!" The officer had to shout to make himself heard over me. Jake cuffed me across the head, and I subsided.

"You taking him home?"

This query was obviously directed at Jake, but I answered instead. "No, sir. I couldn't if I wanted to. He's taking me home. We kinda thought it'd work better that way."

They directed us to carry on, and to "Keep him quiet, for the love of God!"

"I'll try to!" I shouted back as Jake dragged me along.

Four blocks later, we mutually dropped the charade, and shared a grin at our success. "You know, for a ruddy little Yankee toff, you've got some nerve, Andrew Lowell. I guess you'll do alright," Jake told me. I decided that this was high praise, and we walked along in companionable silence until we reached a building that didn't look anything at all like the posh rooms I'd assumed we were heading for. Kemper, however, answered Jake's knock, and I confessed to myself that today had presented more mysteries than solutions. I _hate_ days like those.

We parted company, then, and I took a cab back to Hollingshead Lane. Hosehead and I split a ring of sausage for supper. There was no mystery to the dog – he was a furry, slobbering stomach on legs. That sort of simplicity suited me just fine.


	7. Jannie Settles In

_A/N:_ _Wow, look at that! Another chapter, without a year-long wait. Is this progress, or what? Thanks to everyone who reviewed the previous chapter. Yes, that's right, all one of you. Seriously, though, thanks. I can't tell you how much your encouragement means to me._

**Chapter the Seventh, in which Jannie Begins to Become Inured to Her Situation**

My feet hurt. I felt like I'd been walking forever, and the glittery red spikes that had been so alluring, so positively enchanting in the store window, were murder. My toes were scrunched together in the points, and a nail that needed trimming was cutting into the pad of the toe adjacent to it. The burning in my calves radiated in waves like an asphalt mirage.

Maybe that was why there were mirages flickering along the asphalt in front of me. Perhaps the tar was absorbing the pain. Entropic escape in the form of watery shimmers undulating across the black ribbon that weaved in my vision.

The hot tar sucked at the spiky heels again as I plodded forward. I seemed to be sinking deeper every time, as though the road was made of progressively less – or finer – gravel. Sand. It was sand, now, sand glued together with sticky tar. Tar sand. I struggled to pull my feet up out of the muck. It had hold of my ankle, and I collapsed from the effort of extracting myself.

I couldn't get the shoe out. I heaved, I pulled. The tar pulled back. Finally, I undid the straps and left it there, baking in the hot ooze. I struggled to my feet, and, wrenchingly, made my way to the side of the highway.

I was done. I couldn't go any further. Not just now. Rest. I needed to sit here and rest a bit. It was just too hot. Too still. Maybe it would rain? There were dark clouds building on the horizon.

There was a crashing crack, and I smelled the freshness of ozone. But that was absurd, the bank of clouds was too far away. I studied it again, and noticed a finger of wind descending way out across the plains.

"Too far away." I turned to look at the lava lamp I'd been traveling with.

"Yeah, I think so, too," I agreed.

We sat quietly, watching as a second cyclone danced with the first. There was no wind here, just a horsefly that buzzed incessantly around my head. After a while, I sighed. "You know, Larry, it sure would be nice if we had some sort of teleportation device. Then we wouldn't have to walk all the way."

"Dream on, sister. Teleportation is about as unlikely as time travel." Larry was a real downer, sometimes.

A dog howled behind us.

"You know what your problem is?" Larry was going to offer self-help advice. He did that a lot. I kept telling him it would be an improvement if he didn't. "Your problem is that you don't think things through before you jump headfirst."

I ignored him, and listened, instead, to Hosehead's heavy panting. He noticed that he had my attention, and rolled over to present his belly for scratching. I obliged, and he gave a doggy whimper of contentment. A peculiar, rhythmic beeping emanated from his gut, and I wondered if he'd swallowed an alarm clock again. He thumped his tail in time to the beeps. THUMP, thump. THUMP, thump. THUMP, thump.

"That's really annoying," I told him.

"Well, a body can't be expected to start their day without a double-double and a honey cruller, you know," he responded.

I had to acquiesce that he had a point.

I twisted uncomfortably in the bed sheets, and rolled over onto my stomach.

"Don't forget your shoes!" Larry said, as I drifted into a deeper sleep.

When I woke up the next morning, I was beginning to seriously feel the effects of caffeine deprivation. I'd been dreaming about coffee and donuts, and would have given an awful lot to be able to nip down to Tim Hortons and get a cuppa. I idly wondered, as I dressed, if hockey had even been invented yet.

I had the morning to myself: according to the work schedule Kemper had oh-so-thoughtfully drawn up in the address book, I wasn't due for my shift at the Kensington watch until two o'clock this afternoon. I decided to put my liberty to good use, and work on restocking the pantry with edibles. Coffee would be good, too. I'm not averse to making my own. I'm just lazy, which I think I've mentioned before.

It did occur to me that I could indulge in sloth and take my meals out, but that seemed a silly waste of money. Kemper had fronted me a decent amount of cash, and I still had remnants of the stolen billfold tucked away, but I like planning for a rainy day. I suspected that I'd feel ever so much better about my situation if I had enough money to jump town, should the circumstances ever merit it.

And it wasn't as though I was incapable of cooking. I just never seemed to be able to work up much desire to indulge in anything elaborate on my own behalf. I'd often been wont to joke that I needed either a man, or a dog to cook for. Well, now I _was_ a man, and I certainly did have a dog.

Speaking of which – "Hosehead," I said as I locked the door behind me, "We gotta talk about this infernal, incessant howling of yours. It's one thing to keep me up half the night, but if you keep at it, the neighbours will be apt to tar and feather you."

I could probably be accused of anthropomorphizing animals of my acquaintance, but I like to think that the dog fully understood me. He fully understood me, didn't give a damn, and had no intention of changing any of his habits to suit my demands. I scowled at his impudent canine grin.

There was a noxious odour of fresh sewage in the air, today, and my whimsical desire for pancakes with maple syrup abruptly vanished. I wondered how often the wind blew in from across the river. If this were a common occurrence, I'd start to look like a walking twig.

The notion of walking into the breeze distressed me, but there was no other way to reach the small market where I'd found the chemist's. It amazed me, really, that any sane person would actively choose to live in such a blatantly disgusting city. I mean, granted, Toronto – and Calgary for that matter – weren't much better, but the caveat applies that no sane people live in either. London, on the other hand, presumably had at least a smattering of sanity, given it was a cultural and academic hub of Europe.

It further distressed me to come to the conclusion that people probably didn't have much of a choice in the matter.

_I_ didn't have much of a choice in the matter.

As foul as the scent was, I did recognize that it posed no immediate threat to me. The fish in the Thames almost certainly suffered from the excess nitrogen, but those of us fortunate enough to have _Ichthyostega_ in our family tree were safe from having the stuff in our immediate surroundings.

Well, I don't know if "fortunate" is the right adjective. I deny the existence of a guiding intelligence in evolution, because surely anything more intelligent than brute statistical chance would have ensured that vertebrates were more sensitive to harm in their environs. It is a delicate irony that those things which are most dangerous, are those which we sense only mildly, or not at all. I mean, I don't know about you, but I surely wasn't born with a Geiger counter lodged up my nose.

True to this universal irony, I'd already grown accustomed to the heavy yellow smog that obscured the horizon. I had noticed only that my throat felt a bit raw, but had thought little more of it, until now. Statistics, facts, figures, images of tarry, cancer-ridden lungs – they all clamoured into my brain, screaming at me to run, to escape, to quit wasting time _going to the damnable market_, when I ought to be expending my free moments working on a way to get myself home.

The problem, though, was that I didn't _know_ how to get home, and every time this realisation flickered in place, I felt a surge of hopeless panic welling up inside me. The ostrich syndrome at least allowed me to preserve what little remained of my cognitive abilities.

I realised that my dark thoughts had carried me up to the chemist's, and I happily shoved my head back into the sand. They sold Coca-cola, and I was suffused with happiness at this observation. I wasn't really trapped in an alien world – just an older one. I'd be okay here, because as time went on, I'd feel more and more in touch with the pulse of things. It was exactly the opposite dilemma my parents faced. Hell, even Alzheimer's wouldn't be so bad, because they say you remember your youth best.

I wavered in front of the shop window, torn with longing for a bottle of coke. Something niggled, though: didn't they used to add in extract from coca leaves? Great. _Nothing like a shot of cocaine to start your day off right, eh Jan? _I rolled my eyes, and walked on.

Just because it superficially reminded me of home every now and then was no reason to presume that it wasn't alien. After all, Mars had running water on it at one point, but it ain't the kind of place to raise the kids – it's cold as hell, for starters.

London didn't have that problem. I wiped the sweat from my upper lip, before stepping into the green grocer's. It was cooler inside the store, and the rich, loamy scent of fresh produce eased a tension inside of me. Vegetables were safe, familiar territory. I could handle cabbage.

There was more than produce, though. I'd clearly underestimated: sugar, flour, rolled oats, assorted tins of spices – I thought I recognized the McCormick logo – cans of Fry's cocoa, canisters of baking powder, flat little cans of sardines, cakes and tins of dry and active yeast, a rack of gleaming kitchenware, even shoelaces… I barely knew where to begin, and that was before considering the bins and crates of fruits and vegetables.

I must've looked lost, because a shop-girl came bustling out of a back room.

She flashed me a cheery smile, and batted her eyes, which reminded me that I was passing for a man. It was alright, I supposed, to look confused. This was 19th-century London, and grocery shopping was women's work. "Good morning," she called, "Father's just helping to load some things, and then he'll be right with you."

"Couldn't you help me?" I raised an eyebrow.

She laughed, and flushed. "Oh no! Or," she lowered her voice, and gave me a conspiratorial smile, "at least not with your order."

Needless to say, I wasn't used to having girls flirt with me, so I think I can be forgiven for not knowing how to respond. I smiled at her blandly, and hoped that it sufficed. Not a shop-girl, after all, it transpired.

A short, balding man who had a comfortable, paunchy look about him strode in, and rescued me from acute embarrassment. The girl gave me a coquettish wink, and returned to the back room. I guiltily fixed my attention on the shopkeeper.

"And what can I do for you, today?"

"Er," I looked around, "I guess I'll have some flour, to start with."

"Big bag, or a small one?"

He'd bent down to a lower shelf, and I had to address his buttocks: "Probably just a small one." It occurred to me that I was going to have to carry all of my purchases back home.

He hefted a substantial looking paper package onto the counter. "And sugar?"

"Sure, just a little." Another package joined the first. "And baking powder, I suppose." He brought over a can of it, and some dried yeast, although I hadn't asked.

"I suppose you're stocking up a bachelor pantry, then?" he asked cheerfully, adding a box of salt to the ever-growing mound.

"Uh, yeah. Yes." I eyed the heap with trepidation.

"We've some nice raisins in this week." It was more than a statement. When I didn't immediately agree, he brought over a small sampling. "Lovely raisins, indeed. Sweet, and not too tough. Give them a try, go on."

I did, and he was right. I nodded resignedly, as he leaned over a bin to fill a small paper bag. He noticed me glancing towards the heavy-looking sacks of potatoes, and strode over to where they were mounded along the wall. For such a short stature, he managed the rough burlap sack admirably. I definitely wasn't going to do as well.

The long counter was looking less spacious than it had when I'd entered the shop. The shopkeeper noticed this too, as he leaned the potatoes up against the side. "Jenkins! I say, Jenkins!"

No one answered his call. He rolled his eyes, and then turned to me. "Have you a cab out front?"

The notion of hiring a cab hadn't even occurred to me. "Er, no, I walked over. Thought I'd get some exercise." I grinned wryly.

"Well, I dare say you'll want one." He didn't wait for me to respond. "Constance?"

The girl poked her head out from the back room, "Yes, Father?"

"Be a love and see if you can fetch this gentleman a cab, would you, dear?"

"Certainly," she said, catching my eye and smiling. My ears burned as she flounced out of the shop. This was beyond awkward – it was painful. Fortunately, he wasn't looking at me, but was instead saying something eloquent with his eyebrows to a gangly, spotty adolescent, who I assumed was the Jenkins he'd called for.

I glanced around the shop again. "Could I get some onions as well? And a braid of garlic?" I asked, spying them suspended in a corner. "Oh! And a few carrots."

Jenkins had apparently been properly chastised. He darted about, gathering my produce as the grocer tallied up my purchases. The girl returned as I was putting away my billfold. She seemed a bit out of breath; I hoped it was from running, and not some other cause.

All told, I was glad to be off. It hadn't been a particularly strenuous morning (in fact, it was only just after 9:30 when I returned to Hollingshead Lane), but the "weird factor" was a bit more than I could handle with aplomb. It was one thing to be mistaken for a guy, but quite another to be found attractive in that capacity by your own sex.

Hosehead wasn't there, and I felt a touch of remorse at the thought that he'd likely wandered on. I'd been contemplating making pancakes for our lunch, but without the dog around, there didn't seem much point. I wasn't hungry. I asked the cabby to wait, toted my purchases in, and then set off for Kensington. Perhaps I'd snoop around, before my shift at the watch started.

When I arrived, though, I found that I didn't really feel all that curious. Hosehead's desertion had made me lonely and dismal, and I set off for the empty house. There was no reason I couldn't show up ahead of time. Perhaps Jake and Carson would appreciate being relieved a little earlier than scheduled.

Scheduled. Hunh. What kind of a criminal organization schedules things? It didn't seem shady enough. I dismissed out of hand the possibility that Kemper's motives were pure and legitimate. Jake and Carson had "crooked" written all over them. Even if they were putting in regular hours that an accountant would have been proud of, they weren't upstanding citizens by any means. We. _We_ weren't upstanding citizens. There was no sense giving myself airs, because I was engaged in this dodgy espionage game, too.

I mounted the stairs to find my coworkers utterly riveted by what looked like a hand of poker. They had the decency to look guilty about it when they noticed me leaning on the door jamb. I hadn't been saddled with the sharpest tacks in the box, because it took them a few minutes to realise I was there. I mentally down-graded my assessment of their inherent evilness. Surely villains worth any salt would be a little more alert. What had been the point of yesterday's admonishments to keep an eye out for "the good doctor"?

I recalled my frustration at the lack of description for this particular individual, and decided to interrupt their game. "Say, what's this feller look like, anyhow?"

"Who, the doctor?" Confirmation. We did have a specific target.

"Yeah."

"Keep your voice down," Carson said, irritation edging his words.

Jake rearranged the cards in his hand, before responding to my query. "Well, he's average-like. 'Bout as tall as I am, moustache, dishwater blonde hair, what's going a little thin at the back. Dresses smart when he does go out, wears a bowler."

I filed the details away, and latched onto the obvious lead: "He doesn't go out much?"

"His wife does, but he's a ruddy hermit, from what I can see. Maybe he tunnels out from under the hedgerow once it gets dark."

"Like a mole, you mean?" Carson gave a wheezy, snorting laugh, and drew from the deck.

"Sure," Jake said, "Or like a hedgehog, maybe. He's a strange one, that bloke." He shook his head, and spread his cards.

Or maybe like an earthworm, I put in silently. I could tell neither of them was much interested in keeping up the watch, so I settled myself by the window. He couldn't be much of a doctor, if he sequestered himself in his house. Probably no bedside manners, on account of being an oligochaete. I tried envisioning a balding earthworm with a bowler hat, and grinned. How would a yearly check-up go? "Good morning, how are you? I'm Dr Worm. I'm not a real doctor, but I am a real worm, I am an actual worm. I live like a --"

"Shut your gob, Lowell!"

I'd been humming to myself. I stopped, chastened.

"Aw, Carson, don't be so hard on the fellow. I tell you about the stunt he pulled last night? 'E's like a blooming little songbird, he is. I don't suppose he can really help himself none. Just like a lark!"

We were getting knee-deep in animal similes. If this kept up, we'd have enough to stock an ark. Soon, however, Jake had trounced Carson's hand with a royal flush, and the two decided that some other duties required their attention. I didn't really want to know what they were up to. Just watching the street didn't bother my conscience much and I was more than content to leave things that way.

The boredom set in a lot faster than it had the day before. The noon bustle again provided some distraction, but it didn't last long enough to qualify as anything approaching a challenge to my faculties. Towards 4:00, things got marginally more interesting: just as I'd gotten up to counting the 750th cobble in the street, the smart black door of the house directly opposite opened. The individual it emitted could be none other than Dr Worm himself.

Jake hadn't mentioned a limp, but every other detail was perfectly in accordance, right down to the bowler hat. If that didn't convince me, he was carrying a medical bag. Apparently he had patients after all. A cab pulled up, then, and I lost any further opportunity to study our prey. I jotted down a complete description, not sparing the slightest of details. For some reason, Kemper had not informed me of the purpose behind the watch, and I was loathe to reveal that I'd gained some insight into it. Regardless of my present confusion, I now knew more than I had a couple days ago, and there's an old adage that insists knowledge is power.

It seemed odd, that we were only keeping tabs on Dr Worm's movement, and not actively spying on him. Surely we'd learn a lot more by following him to his patient, or eavesdropping on his breakfast conversation? The object, then, must not have been to learn about him. Kemper must have already known all he needed to. This realisation made the watch seem far less innocent. We weren't just busy-bodies; we were stalking a man, learning his habits, tracking his movements. I wondered to what end.

I struggled with the disquiet for the rest of my shift, turning it over and over again in my mind. It all came back to the question of who Kemper really was. A well-connected middleman, he'd said. Was he playing both sides of the law? That took some doing, and meant that there were silken strands of plots and schemes woven deeper and farther than the empty house at whose window I sat.

Carson and Jake weren't the least bit troubled by any of this, it seemed. Whether their intellects were too mean to grasp it, or they were simply pragmatists, I couldn't tell. So long as they had money for tobacco, they seemed content.

I found myself musing about what it would be like to be content. To live in the moment, and stop caring about things beyond my reach and ken. Perhaps I'd find out. I was certainly making progress in that direction, I thought, as I walked the last few blocks to my humble abode on Hollingshead. The dog had returned in my absence, and I patted him with considerable enthusiasm. To hell with Kemper's machinations. I had my dog, and soon I had stew bubbling away on the stove.


End file.
